Seven Home Staging Mistakes

Home Staging Mistakes

Home staging is the act of preparing a home for sale. The goal of staging is to make the home appealing to several potential buyers, helping the home sell faster and for more money. Home staging is an essential part of the home selling process. However, it’s possible for staging to go wrong. Here are seven things to avoid when staging your home.

1. Beat up or ugly furnishings and décor

Great staging starts with choosing furniture that shows off the home in the best light possible. This includes placing the furniture optimally. Older or beat up furniture can take away from the overall look of the home. If you have older furniture, you may want to consider renting furniture from a home staging company.

2. Distracting themes and scenes

Home staging helps potential buyers see their new lives. To do so, stagers will often set up scenes to help the vision along, such as a set dining room table or a home office. However, sometimes the scenes can get out of hand. Make sure that the staging makes sense, not only for a home but for where you live. A beach scene with beach décors such as a beach ball, umbrella, and seashells don’t make sense in a Midwest home.

3. Not clean or clutter-free

It can be challenging to keep a home clean at all times if you’re still living in the home while you’re showing it. Little messes can be distracting for potential buyers, especially if they’re the only spots in the room that has a mess. Even if your home is well staged, these bits of clutter can instantly turn off a buyer.

4. Using fake everything

You want to make your home feel lived in, so the buyer can picture their life in their new home. However, you shouldn’t convey this message with fake items. Fake fruit or anything inflatable (such as a mattress) can make the home feel not real. It reinforces an idea that the home isn’t real and isn’t a possibility for them to move into.

5. Not staging to scale

Sellers obviously want their home to seem as spacious as possible. However, you shouldn’t do this by using smaller, lightweight items. In fact, these items can make a room seem smaller. Instead, make sure your furniture and accessories match the room in scale. If you’re still worried about the room looking small, there are plenty of ways to make a small room look larger.

6. Keeping doors closed

A potential buyer should be able to move through a home without thinking. Many times, a buyer will pass over a staircase to the basement or an upper level because they assumed the closed door was to a closet.

7. Exterior vs. interior

Both the inside of a home and the outside are important to the sale. One should not overcome the other. Make sure that you pay as much attention to the outside as you do the inside. After all, the outside of your home is what the buyer will make their first impressions of the home on, so it’s important your curb appeal is just as good as the staging inside.