Home Staging Do’s and Don’ts

Home staging aims to make your home more attractive to buyers, in turn helping sell your home more quickly. When your home does sell, it’s likely to sell for more money if it’s properly staged. Even if you don’t hire a professional service, there are easy ways to self-stage your home–and sabotage it, if you’re not careful. If you’re planning on selling your home soon, learn what you can do for home staging.

What is Home Staging?

The process of decorating, adding or reorganizing furniture, and styling the home to enhance its appeal for listing photos and showings. It’s a commonly used tactic to successfully market any dwelling by making it look its best. 

Are you wondering how to stage a house for sale? The process includes decluttering and depersonalizing rooms, deep cleaning, repairing and fixing minor issues, and updating the areas of the property overall using paint or strategic decorative details. 

But before you start doing any of that, consider the factors. Sellers should start by considering if they are selling the house empty or if they will be living in the home during the selling process. Once this is out of your way, define your home staging budget.

To keep costs low -and if you’re living in the house, using your furniture and decor will most likely be your real estate agent’s advice. In this circumstance, you can do a DIY home staging. On the other hand, if the house is empty, consider hiring an agent experienced in home staging or a professional home stager. It will be worth the investment. 

The Importance of Home Staging in Real Estate

Home staging is essential to breathe new life into a slow-moving sale. With technology leading the real estate industry, most buyers begin their search online; attractive staging in listing photos helps attract potential buyers and generate greater interest in your home.

Staging helped 81 percent of buyers picture themselves living in the home, which is crucial for driving a sale. Buyers need to feel emotionally connected to a property before making an offer, and staging helps foster that essential connection.

DIY Home Staging or Professional Home Staging?

The goal is selling your home for top dollar, and home staging is your ally. But should you do the home staging yourself or leave the work to a professional? Well, it depends. Do-it-yourself home staging is budget-friendly; you can conduct your research, and there are guides out there that will walk you through the step-by-step process. 

If you have the budget, the professional home stager will create a home staging plan using their expertise, design techniques, consideration of real estate market trends, and even buyer psychology to help sell your home for (or even above) your asking price. They will study the space and take care of everything. 

If the house is occupied, they will work around your spaces and use most of your furniture. In an empty home, they will bring everything and take everything away once the home is sold. 

If you love design and want to get the best of both worlds, consider doing your own home staging but booking a virtual or in-person consultation with a professional staging service. This is a good way to save money while still taking advantage of their expertise. The stager can put together a plan for your property that you can carry out on your own. 

Home Staging Do’s and Don’ts

Knowing what works—and what doesn’t—can make all the difference when it comes to home staging. In this section, we’ll explore the key do’s and don’ts of staging:

Home Staging Do’s 

Do Clean Your Home Thoroughly

Cleaning is the first step of staging. When cleaning for staging purposes, homeowners must clean more deeply and thoroughly than they normally would. This can involve deep cleaning upholstery, curtains, and out-of-reach places like ceiling fans. 

Take steps like hiring a professional carpet or tile cleaner or having the exterior pressure-washed. Deep cleaning before a home showing can take a long time, so start early and plan. Home sellers who need more time may want to hire a professional to do the cleaning for them.

Do Paint the Walls and Refresh the Carpets and Windows

Freshly painted walls look clean and well-maintained. Homeowners painting their walls before buyers see their home should pick neutral paint colors to ensure that their house appeals to as many buyers as possible. Bold colors may not appeal to all buyers’ tastes, but they can do it themselves.

As for the carpets, consider having them cleaned professionally. If they’re outdated and there’s a nice hardwood floor under them, remove them to use the hardwood as a selling point. If you have treated windows, replace those outdated ones, or, if the windows are great, remove all the treatments to let them shine.

Do Contact a Real Estate Professional

A real estate professional can give you advice that can help you decide what else you can do to stage your home. They’ll consider how to move your furniture to highlight your home’s best features. Working with a real estate agent can make the home selling and buying process successful, so contact a reputable professional in your area today.

Do Keep Things Tidy and Neutral

Decluttering helps create a clean, spacious, and inviting environment that allows potential buyers to visualize themselves living in the home, so keep things tidy! A clutter-free space highlights the home’s best features, makes rooms appear larger, and minimizes distractions, allowing buyers to focus on the layout and functionality. 

It is also essential to keep things neutral, from neutral color of paint to artwork and decor (if possible); this helps future homeowners imagine themselves living there and picturing their own accessories and furniture quickly. Keeping things neutral also means depersonalizing the home, removing family photos, collectibles, souvenirs, custom-made decorative pieces, and more.

Do Prioritize Lighting Solutions

Proper lighting has a huge impact on the success of staging a home for sale. Well-illuminated rooms will feel more spacious and welcoming, drawing potential buyers’ attention to the property’s most standout features. To succeed with lighting, consider a blend of natural light, task, and accent lighting to showcase your home at its finest.

Do Accessorize

An essential part of home staging is everything related to accessories. To accessorize and prevent clutter, consider following the rule of three. The rule of three is a design principle that says that to obtain a visually attractive and balanced composition, you should group items in odd numbers, particularly in groups of three. You can follow the rule of three with accessories, colors, and accents.

Home Staging Don’ts

Don’t Buy Everything New

Most successful home staging involves rearranging, updating, hiding imperfections, repurposing, cleaning, and decluttering around the house, not buying new items, and certainly not buying large, expensive things. 

Professional stagers already have the furniture and accessories they use to stage a home or have trusted companies where they rent everything they may need. If you are home staging a home yourself, try to buy the least possible. 

Don’t Leave Your Pet and Pet Accessories in the Home

We love our pets, but the reality is they can innocently damage a home. Some pets have accidents on the carpet, while others chew up the walls or spread dander all over the house, which can exacerbate allergies. 

Leaving a pet in the home during home showings reminds potential buyers that the home could be damaged in unseen ways by the animal who lives on the property. In addition, leaving pet accessories like half-chewed toys on the floor can make the house look messy and cluttered.

Homeowners who want to sell their homes for a high price should plan to take their pets with them during all home showings.  Make a mess-check walkthrough a step before departing, and clean up any pet messes left before buyers come to see the house. This may even mean cleaning up the pet’s food dish and any leftover food by the bowl.

Don’t Use Anything Broken

It is as crucial as decluttering and cleaning to ensure that everything is properly functioning in the areas that the buyer will walk through. Take your time inspecting the home and invest time, effort, and money in repairing anything broken. 

If there is a leaky faucet, wobbly doorknobs, damaged windows, or chipped tiles, schedule reparations. Also, swap out any non-working light bulbs.

Don’t Shove In The Closet

We’ve all been there: guests or people are coming over, and you only have minutes to straighten up. Common tactics like loading the dishwasher or stuffing messes in closets don’t work as well for home showings. 

Potential buyers want to see a home’s storage space, and if it’s cluttered with your stuff, it makes the closets and cabinets seem smaller. While cleaning your home, consider paring down your personal items and reclaiming some space in your storage spaces.

Don’t Neglect Curb Appeal

Home staging goes beyond the interior and includes the outdoor living spaces of your property. A tidy front yard, spotless driveway, and inviting entryway can greatly improve curb appeal, leaving a strong first impression on prospective buyers.

When learning how to stage a house for sale, focus on both indoor and outdoor spaces. Clean up landscaping, add fresh potted plants or flowers, consider repairing cracks in walls or doors, give them a fresh coat of paint, and ensure the exterior is well-maintained overall. 

Don’t Invest in Large Scale Renovations

Home staging is not the moment to schedule a kitchen renovation or a bathroom full makeover. Home staging is giving the home a simple cosmetic refresh. A fresh coat of paint can work wonders, offering a modern update to everything from kitchen cabinets to bathroom vanities. 

If necessary, consider installing new flooring, updating bathroom vanities and light fixtures, and making essential repairs—these upgrades can provide a solid return on investment and help get the home sold.

FAQS About How To Stage A House For Sale

What is the three-foot, five-foot rule in home staging?

Professional stagers swear by the 3-foot-5-foot rule in home staging. This principle refers to the ideal viewing distance for potential buyers to notice elements and features in a home for sale.

The idea is that objects within three feet are seen with clarity and detail, whereas those farther than five feet are taken in with a wider, less detailed perspective.

Now, how does the 3-foot-5-foot rule make home staging more effective? Impacting how buyers experience the space. The objects within the three-foot radius should be organized and appealing to provoke a positive impression in the buyers. 

With the decorative Items within the five-foot range, stagers are often more relaxed, looking to create a balanced layout in the specific room they are working on.  

Do homeowners get to keep the staging furniture?

Homeowners typically do not get to keep the staging furniture. The furniture used in staging is not part of the home’s purchase price, so if you wish to keep it, you’d need to discuss buying it separately from the stager. It’s worth noting that stagers often rent larger pieces from stores and may only own the smaller décor items.

Furthermore, staging furniture is chosen more for its visual appeal than practicality or comfort. Some pieces might even be undersized to make a space look bigger. If you’re still interested, you can always ask where the stager was sourced and potentially buy it yourself.

Do staged houses sell better?

Staged homes do generally sell better. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) 2023 Profile of Home Staging report, 81% of buyer’s agents said that staging a home made it easier for buyers to visualize the property as their future home. 

On the selling side, 20% of seller’s agents reported that staging increased the dollar value of offers by 1% to 5%, and 27% said it helped reduce the time a home spent on the market. 

Should I remove family pictures when selling a house?

Removing family pictures and other personal photos, collectibles, and other personalized items, furniture, and decor from a house you’re trying to sell is a good idea. First, it is evidently for decluttering purposes, but it also offers a neutral space that allows potential buyers to imagine how their lives and things would look there instead of focusing on your stuff. 

What is soft staging?

Soft staging is staging a home without including any furniture. In this sense, furniture is considered the “hard,“ more complex part of a staging process. By soft staging your home for sale, stagers will focus on decluttering and including artwork and accents to give the property a cozier and more inviting feel for the buyer’s walkthrough. 

What is the ROI on home staging?

The ROI of home staging is substantial. According to data from the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA), in 2021, approximately 75% of sellers saw a return on investment of 5% to 15% above the asking price when they staged their homes. 

In addition, investing just 1.3% of a home’s value in staging leads to an average return of 7.1% over the list price, making it a cost-effective way to boost the sale value.

Final Words: The Do’s and Don’ts of Home Staging

Ready to give your home a cosmetic fix? Understanding the key do’s and don’ts of home staging can influence the outcome of your sale. Concentrating on necessary upgrades, removing clutter, and crafting an inviting indoor and outdoor atmosphere will boost your home’s attractiveness and draw a larger range of buyers. Good luck!

Updated October 2024