How to Stage a House to Sell: Top Home Staging Tips

What is home staging? Home staging is making your home as attractive to potential buyers as possible.

It means creating a home that a potential buyer could see themselves living in, a home that portrays a certain lifestyle.

Rather than selling a building of bricks and mortar, you are selling a home that could fulfill the purchasers’ needs, wants, and aspirations.

You will want to stage your home before the estate agent takes the photos for the listing so that you maximise your home’s appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.

In a slow housing market staging your home could help it to sell quicker, whilst, in a strong market, a properly staged home could help maximise the price you get.

You may also like to read: How to Get Your Offer Accepted: Getting a Landlord or Seller to Choose You. This is an invaluable guide with tips on how to become a strong buyer or prospective tenant in a competitive housing market.

How Do I Sell My House For The Best Price?

To get the absolute best price for your home you need to create a lot of interest in it so that in effect a bidding war is created or at the very least you generate plenty of viewers.

The more people who love your home, the more offers you will get, and hopefully the higher the selling price will be pushed.

Home staging will help you create that frenzy of interested buyers.

Do staged homes sell for more money? According to research by Benham and Reeves, a well-staged home could add as much as £25,000 to the sale price on average, with that potentially rising to £47,000 in London.

You may also like to read: What Should I Name My House? – Add Value to Your Home With a Name. Adding a name to your house can add thousands to the asking price. In this guide, we look at how best to name your home and make it stand out from the crowd.

Home Staging Checklist

Before we get into the specifics, here is a checklist of easy ways to stage your house for selling.

• Declutter
• Spring Clean
• Refresh not Replace
• Depersonalise
• Neutralise
• Keep it Fresh
• Finish Those DIY Jobs
• Focus on Kerb Appeal
• Don’t Forget the Garden
• Add Those Finishing Touches

You may also like to read: Every Home Moving Checklist You Will Ever Need Checklists are really useful when moving home, here we have collated all the checklists you would need to make your home move as quick and easy as possible.

How to Stage a Home on a Budget

Staging your home need not cost anything, there are easy ways to stage your home for little to no cost.

Staging a house on a budget, especially doing it yourself, makes the most financial sense.

You could throw thousands of pounds at the staging by hiring a home staging specialist, renting high-quality furniture, or replacing kitchens and bathrooms, but for the average home seller, there is little point in wasting that kind of money.

Here we offer you some cost-effective ways for staging your home to secure the best price, highlight the positive aspects of your home, and make it as desirable to potential buyers as possible.

#1 Declutter

The most important home marketing and moving task to do is to declutter.

This means going room by room through your entire home getting rid of all the things you no longer need or love, and putting the rest away tidily.

Seasonal clothing, kitchen gadgets that you rarely use, or winter blankets can all be stored up in the loft.

Sell or donate old clothes, toys that are no longer played with, or anything that you have no need of anymore.

Clear as many surfaces as you can, especially in the kitchen, to create an illusion of even more space.

However, decluttering does not mean just stuffing everything into cupboards and drawers.

You need those surplus things out of the house.

You can guarantee that the cupboards that are full to bursting will be the first ones that potential buyers open to see how much storage space your home has.

The fewer items you have cluttering your home now, the larger your home will seem, and when it comes to moving, the cheaper your moving costs will be.

You may also consider decluttering your furniture. Too much furniture will make the rooms look cramped, so just have key or statement pieces of furniture on display.

Remember that too many pieces of furniture, or bulky furniture, will also absorb light, and you want your rooms to look as bright and airy as possible.

The garage and shed should also be decluttered and tidied as any potential buyer will want to look inside those as well.

You may like to read: How to Declutter for a Home Move which is a comprehensive room-by-room guide on how to declutter your home in the most efficient way.

#2 Spring Clean

Now you have decluttered, it is time to make your home shine.

It does not matter how many of the boxes it ticks for potential buyers, if your home is dirty or smells of pets, you will put people off of buying it.

So deep clean your home, clean it so that it is absolutely spotless.

You may like to read: How to Deep Clean Your Home When Moving in which we look at a deep cleaning schedule for every room of the home. Included are some eco-friendly cleaning product recipes that will not only get your home spotless, and will save you money, but are good for the planet too.

#3 Refresh not Replace

There is rarely any point in replacing a kitchen, bathroom, or even flooring, as the new owners will likely want ones of their own choosing.

But it is amazing how even a fresh coat of paint on kitchen cupboards can totally transform a room, so look at ways to refresh rather than replace it.

A new shower curtain costs a few pounds but could transform your bathroom.

Using a grout cleaner to clean between tiles will instantly make a tiled room look better. Even if the tiles aren’t great, clean is better than dirty with not-so-good tiles.

Hire a carpet cleaning machine or floor buffer. A few pounds spent on these little things can make a huge difference.

#4 Depersonalise

By staging your home you are hoping that people viewing will be able to easily envision themselves living there.

If you have dozens of pictures of your family or friends all over the home, it will be far harder for them to visualize it as their home.

So pack away all the personal photos, or children’s toys, in fact, any evidence of it being your home.

For security reasons, it is also not a good idea to have family photos that can be seen in the sales pictures.

The home must obviously look lived in and inviting, but it should not scream of the people that live there.

You may also like to read: How to Move Out of a Home You Love. Sometimes moving out of a home that you have a deep emotional attachment to is difficult. In this guide, we look at the best ways to let go of your old home and embrace the changes you face in your new home.

#5 Neutralise

The decoration is obviously a personal choice, but it is best to go with as neutral a colour scheme as possible. So if you have bright green walls for example you may want to give those a lick of neutral paint.

Most people will want a house that they can move straight into and feel comfortable with, garish paint or wallpaper may put off some buyers.

#6 Keep It Fresh

Placing some live plants and fresh flowers around the home will not only brighten it up but will smell good too.

Keep blinds and curtains open so that the home is flooded with as much natural light as possible.

It is also a good idea to open up the windows to air the home before viewings.

Avoid overpowering air fresheners, natural airing to waft out smells is far better and does not look like you are trying to cover bad smells.

If you have pets or are smokers you may wish to have your carpets, upholstery, and curtains professionally cleaned before any viewings take place.

You may like to read: How To Make Your Home Feel More Relaxing. With suggestions for plants and fragrances to have in your home, this is a great guide to making your home feel peaceful and relaxing – just what you need those potential buyers to feel.

#7 Finish Those DIY Jobs

Go around the home and ensure that there are no unfinished DIY jobs to be done.

Fix leaking taps, squeaky door hinges, or creaking floorboards.

You do not want the viewers to think that the home needs lots of remedial work or is unloved.

#8 Focus on Kerb Appeal

This is extremely important as many house buyers will discount even looking at a home if the home does not appeal to them from the outside.

Give the front door a lick of paint, mow the lawn, sweep the path, trim hedges, add a plant or two to the porch, and don’t forget to clean the public footpath outside your home.

If you have overgrown bushes or trees then get them trimmed so that as much light as possible reaches your home.

#9 Don’t Forget the Garden

Many people buying homes are looking for a garden or outdoor living space so ensure that yours offers a wow factor.

Mow the grass, weed, tidy up, jet wash the patio, and give the patio furniture a good clean or a fresh coat of paint.

Put all the garden tools and children’s garden toys away and ensure that there is no evidence of your pets using the garden.

If you have an outdoor entertaining area then add some bright cushions, soft outdoor lighting, or candles.

Create an ambiance, an area, and a lifestyle that potential buyers will crave to call their own.

You may also like to read: How to Move a Garden to Your New Home. Full of useful and practical tips for taking key plants with you to your new home as well as packing tips for your garden furniture and tools.

#10 Add Finishing Touches

It is the little details, the attention to detail that will make your home stand out from the rest and command that premium price.

Put fresh linen on the beds, big fluffy towels in the bathroom, vases of fresh flowers dotted around, a few ambient lights on, or a rack of quality wines to make your home into a show home.

Our final home staging tip is to put your car in the garage when the photos are taken or park it away from your home. This is purely for security reasons but it is better to be safe than sorry.

How to Stage a House for Selling Whilst Living In It

Staging your home for sale photos is one thing, but trying to keep a home pristine whilst living in it, especially with kids or pets, is not so easy.

So here are some home staging tips and tricks to adopt whilst you are still living in the home you are selling:

• After the sales photos have been taken, adopt the mindset that you are now only caretaking the house for new owners.
• Adopting such a mindset will help keep the home cleaner and tidier, and this will stop you from reverting to leaving things lying around and the place becoming cluttered again.
• Consider having an open house viewing on one specific day so that you only have to do a tidy-up and clean once.
• Plan on the estate agents doing the viewings so that you can take the kids out for the day. You should also consider putting pets in boarding kennels for the day or having them looked after by a friend.
• In the week before your open house avoid cooking foods that have a strong aroma, you don’t want your home smelling of curry.
• If you have pets or are smokers then have upholstery and curtains professionally cleaned.
• Air the home daily so there is no build-up of pet smells and keep on top of the cleaning so that it is easier to do the day before your open house.
• If there are rooms you rarely use, like guest bedrooms, then keep them out of bounds so that they do not get messed up.
• Plan that all the dirty washing is done before viewing day, having an overflowing basket of dirty washing or a line full of washing will not create the good impression you are looking to create.
• The towels and bedding that you used for the sales photos can be put away after the photos have been done and then taken out and staged again on viewing day.
• Clean up after your dog every time it goes into the garden, if not you can guarantee you will miss some doggy dirt that a potential buyer will definitely see.

You may also like to read How to Declutter a Loft for Moving. The loft is usually a dumping ground for all those seldom-used possessions. In this guide, we look at the best ways to declutter your loft so that you are ready to move.

Bonus Home Staging Tips

We have concentrated on staging a home for selling but these home staging tips could also easily be applied to homes that are being rented out too.

Staging is particularly important for high-end property lets where you are looking to attract a certain type of tenant and wish to maximise the rental potential of a home.

As we stated earlier, when staging a home you want the people viewing the property to envision themselves living there, you want to sell a lifestyle, a quality of life that they aspire to.

Depending upon the type of home you are staging, or the area that it is in, you may want to include some statement pieces in the home that highlight those qualities.

For example, if you are selling an old miners’ cottage you might want to have some old miners’ lamps dotted around, or some nautical artifacts if it is a coastal property.

A property that I once sold had an amazing history that went back 180 years. I made a scrapbook of all the history I had uncovered about the property, old deeds, newspaper clippings, and photos of the home from the local historical society.

It was left open on a coffee table so that the people viewing the home could easily read it.

The people who finally bought the home said the history of the home had intrigued them so much that they felt they wanted to be the next chapter in the history of the home and just had to buy the place.

Just simple things like that can turn a viewer into a buyer.

Good luck with staging your home and if you have any home staging tips and tricks to pass on then please leave them in the comments below.