Last Updated on December 18, 2024 by SampleBoard
Home staging is a step that many people skip when selling their homes. However, it can have many advantages that make it incredibly worthwhile.
In fact, it’s often the secret ingredient to a successful sale.
This guide explains exactly what home staging is, how you can benefit from home staging, and what steps you can take to stage your home.
Home staging essentially involves making your home look more attractive for sale. Its major benefits include:
Staging a home is something you should do directly before putting it on the market.
While you can do major remodeling to make your home more attractive, home staging is typically more about dressing up your home and only making minor renovations.
You should aim to spend no more than 1 to 2% of your home’s value on home staging. This allows you to benefit more from the added value it brings.
You can hire professionals to help stage your home. However, you may decide it’s cheaper and easier to do it yourself.
Whether you hire professional help or not, home staging usually involves carrying out the following steps.
Moving home is the perfect opportunity to declutter. Since you’ll have to sort through all your stuff anyway while packing, you may as well get rid of items you don’t want.
The more clutter you remove, the less time and money you’ll spend on removals. Getting rid of clutter will also make your home look more attractive to potential buyers, making each room feel more spacious and clean.
Take the time to declutter well in advance. This will give you time to sell any unwanted items that could be valuable or potentially donate any items that are not valuable but still useful.
Some people recommend decluttering room by room, while others find it easier to focus on categories of items. You could aim to pack as you declutter.
In addition to removing clutter from your home, you should consider relocating personal items like photos, souvenirs, and collectibles.
Depersonalizing a home makes it easier for potential buyers to imagine themselves in your home. This may be harder to do if there’s too much personal stuff.
But what should you do with all your personal items?
While you may be able to hide some items in cupboards or drawers, a more effective option is to temporarily store them in self-storage.
This allows you to keep it to move into your next home while keeping it out of your current home.
Once you’ve decluttered and depersonalized your home, the next stage is to deep clean it. This involves cleaning every inch of it to make it look fresh and sparkly during viewings.
Focus primarily on visible grime, such as dust, cobwebs, mold, stains, and marks. You can also create an impression of cleanliness by introducing clean fragrances to the air.
You can hire cleaners to deep clean your property, or for certain aspects, such as Carpet Cleaning, or you can clean it yourself.
If you clean it yourself, consider whether buying or hiring some specialist equipment such as anti-mold spray and carpet cleaning machines is worth buying.
Cracks are one of the biggest concerns buyers have when buying a home.
While most cracks pose no threat of subsidence or leaks (something a buyer can confirm if they arrange a home survey), some buyers are put off by the sight of a crack in a wall. So consider filling these cracks in.
You can easily do this with caulk. Deeper cracks may require more professional treatment, and you may want to get a surveyor in to determine their severity.
A step you could consider next is to repaint the walls.
This could push up your staging costs quite a bit, but it could be worthwhile if your walls look worn or dirty (or if you’ve applied polarizing paint choices like lime green or pink to certain rooms).
Wallpaper removal could also be considered, as wallpaper is often not to everyone’s taste. Focus on the areas you think would benefit most from repainting.
You can paint these rooms yourself or hire a decorator. Stick to neutral paint tones, as these can give your home an appealing blank canvas feel.
Damaged flooring can be an eyesore and affect buyers' perceptions of your home. Your next step should be to consider replacing flooring that is worn, permanently stained, or otherwise damaged.
Try to keep the cost down by considering cheap laminate and carpet options.
There’s no point investing in high-quality flooring if you won’t be around to enjoy it, and cheaper flooring will often look just as good when new.
You can hire professionals to lay down flooring or do it yourself.
With stone tiles or hardwood, refinishing may be required to spruce up your flooring—something best left to a professional to guarantee the best quality results.
This shouldn’t cost too much.
Do any windows have damaged curtains or blinds? Hanging new curtains or blinds could help make windows look more attractive.
Try to spend as little as possible on new curtains and blinds. Many are priced low but look premium (at least when they’re still brand new).
Houseplants are a small way of literally adding life to rooms. They can make rooms feel healthy and full of vitality.
Try to choose real plants and ensure you don’t spend too much money on them.
Avoid distractingly unusual plants - simple green leafy plants are all necessary. Make sure you keep these watered throughout the viewing process.
A bright home can feel more cheerful. Before viewings, turn on all lights and open all curtains to let in the sun.
Make sure to replace any bulbs that need replacing. If light fittings are broken, call an electrician to repair them. You could also consider buying small lamps to light up gloomy corners.
Many people stage their homes using their own furniture and ornaments. However, it’s possible to move out all of your belongings and move in temporary hired props instead.
This may be necessary if your furniture is worn or a bit wacky and you don’t want to replace it. Home staging services can help here.
Not only do they own these props for hire, but they can arrange them around your home to make it look more appealing.
You’ve now staged the inside of your home, but what about the outside?
You may also want to consider all kinds of jobs, such as cutting the lawn, raking leaves, cleaning the driveway, or even cleaning your roof.
As with all interior staging solutions, you should try to keep the costs low and do as much as you can yourself.
It could be worth staying with family and friends while staging your home and accepting viewings. This prevents you from creating a mess and undoing your hard work.
It lets you remove personal items like toothbrushes and kitchenware to depersonalize your home. Of course, if you don’t have any local family or friends, you may not be able to do this.
Staging your home may seem like a lot of extra work, but it can make a real difference to the value of your home and the speed at which you find a buyer.
You’ll have to do a lot of it before the buyer moves in (such as decluttering and cleaning), so you may as well do it beforehand.
Realtors and staging companies can offer advice on how to stage your home for maximum impact.
And don’t forget about advertising methods like custom yard signs—they're a great way to attract local buyers who might just drive by and fall in love with your home.