How to Stage a House

Staging is one of the best ways to accentuate your home’s positive features and attract willing buyers. Not everyone has the same taste in home décor and though you may love your red walls and blue carpeting, a potential buyer may not appreciate your interior designing talents. A perfectly staged home should appeal to almost everyone viewing it. Buyers should be able to picture themselves living in your house without having to redecorate everything from the basement to the attic. You can make your home stand out in a buyer’s mind if you stage it properly. Just follow the steps below and start packing!

Things You'll Need

• Paint

Instructions

Stage Your House

1. Remove clutter! You can't stage your house if the rooms are full of clutter. You want to emphasize space when marketing your home--not make the rooms seem smaller by leaving things lying around. You're going to be packing everything when you move anyway, so why not start now with the clutter?

2. Paint the rooms a neutral color. Buyers need to be able to envision their things in your home. Their green sofa may not go well with your orange and blue walls and they may have a problem putting little Billy in a hot pink bedroom. Opt for beige or tan walls, and steer clear of white. White walls may make the rooms feel larger but too much white can make them seem drab.

3. Arrange rooms to emphasize space. You should be able to walk around in each room without tripping over carelessly placed furniture. Try to center things up a bit. If you have a couch placed along a wall, make sure the center of the couch is even with the center of the wall. Place end tables on either side of the couch to frame it. You want your buyer's eye to naturally take in the entire room at one time without stopping to look at oddly angled furniture. The room should be warm and inviting, not a chaotic mesh of poorly placed furniture.

4. Put away your personal things. Buyers don't really want to see pictures of Aunt Edna when they view your home. Nor do they want to know intimate things about you such as the color of your tooth brush or what brand of birth control you use. Keep personal things in a drawer when you're staging your house. Buyers need to be able to envision their aunts' pictures on the wall and their birth control pills by the bed.

5. Landscape your lawn and make any outside repairs. It won't matter if your house looks like the Taj Mahal on the inside if the outside is reminiscent of the Clampett shack. The outside of your home is the first thing buyers will see when they pull up. Keep the lawn mowed, plant a few flowers, clean up the yard, and do any necessary repairs to the house before you even think about letting a buyer take a look.

Tips & Warnings

• Try not to get discouraged when droves of people view your home and no one makes an offer. Many buyers are just looking and may not even intend to purchase a house. Others may have been looking for years and still haven't found what they're looking for. If your house is reasonably priced, the right buyer will come along soon enough.