Home staging is an important part of preparing a home for sale.  While there are professional home stagers who can fill empty homes with furniture, for many people home staging can be completed by the sellers.  Why do it?  Let’s chat!

What is home staging?

Home staging is the process of arranging furniture and decor in order to highlight the features of a home.  The purpose of home staging is to show the use and function of each room in a home while keeping it as appealing as possible to the largest pool of buyers.  For example, to stage a living room, you might turn a sofa towards the fireplace instead of the tv while adding a rug and coffee table to highlight the fireplace in the room.  Meanwhile, removing access furniture along the walls would help to open the space and allow buyers to comfortably move around the area.

How does home staging help sell my home?

According to NAR’s 2023 Home Staging Study, eight one percent of buyer’s agents reported that staging helped buyers visualize the property as their future homes. When potential buyers enter a home, the buyers need to be able to visualize their own belonging in the space.  This is hard for most people to do.  What can make it even more challenging is when buyers enter a space full of furniture, brightly colored walls, or see a room without a purpose.  Home staging helps buyers by giving each room a purpose while keeping the rooms welcoming and clean.

How do I start staging my home?

The first step to staging any space in your home is to declutter.  Having fewer things in a room makes it easier to simplify.  Go through the cabinets and closets and decide what stays, what you can pass on to another, and what is trash.  While this can feel like a daunting task, ask yourself, “Do I really want to go through the hassle of moving this to my new home?”  Oftentimes the answer to this question can help sellers let go of some rarely used items.

Next, keep only essential pieces of furniture in each room.  You want the furniture to serve a purpose in the room, but not impede anyone’s ability to walk around the space.

My REALTOR® gave me a lot of suggestions of things to change.  Does this mean my agent hates my decor?

No!  Staging a home is different than living in it.  The suggestions that a REALTOR® gives are meant to make the home appealing to as many people as possible, but it doesn’t mean that your agent thinks you lack design skills.  For example, a spare room you are currently using as a playroom works for your family, but when thinking about all the potential buyers out there, staging the room as a bedroom may be more beneficial.

How long does it take to stage my home?

The answer to this question depends on the size of your home and how much work you have to do. I always advise my clients to start sooner rather than later because life often gets busy and then sellers feel a ton of stress to get the staging done. By starting earlier and tackling one room at a time, sellers can make it easier on themselves. I would also suggest starting with rooms in your home that are used less often because this means they will require less upkeep.

Here are some blogs about home staging tips for specific rooms of your home.