Staging your home can attract buyers, speed up your sale and even get you a higher price. Here are 12 DIY home staging tips to help your home look its best.
Key takeaways
- Staging your home is a way of styling it to appeal to more buyers and encourage a higher sale price
- Home staging can add 10% to your sale price and sell your home 3 times faster
- Get a professional in or do it yourself with our 16 DIY home staging tips
Home staging is styling your home to appeal to more buyers.
It involves stripping back your personal style to help buyers picture themselves living there.
A staged home usually appeals to a wider audience than your own style – no matter your taste.
Research shows that home staging can increase the value of your home by up to 10%. The same report found that 85% of estate agents say a staged home sells up to 3 times faster.
Although you can pay for a professional to stage your home, you can totally do it yourself.
DIY home staging is easy, fast and affordable, and you’ll reap the rewards when it comes to sale time.
Here are some top tips for staging your home.
- Tidy up the front garden
Kerb appeal is a major factor when selling your home. It’s all about that first impression when buyers rock up to view it.
Get rid of weeds, power-clean the paving, sweep the drive and hide the wheelie bins.
You could consider painting your front door and adding a smart new house number to make the entrance really memorable.
- Make sure every room (or zone) has a clear purpose
We all make rooms multi-task for us, whether it’s a home office in the spare bedroom or a makeshift laundry space in the conservatory.
But home stagers recommend reverting rooms back to their main purpose. If your home’s listed with 3 bedrooms, make sure buyers will find 3 bedrooms at their viewing.
If you have an open plan design, split the room into zones and make it clear how you use each space.
- Clear clutter and nick-nacks
Everyone has a bit of clutter lying around. A home’s there to be lived in, right?
But potential buyers want a blank canvas so they can imagine their nick-nacks in it.
Clearing clutter and personal items is home staging 101.
It leaves more floor and shelf space, contributing to a clean and minimalist feel.
A good rule of thumb is to remove half of the items in the room. The feeling of spaciousness will be worth any storage costs.
- Use throws and cushions to revive old furniture
Professional home staging often involves wheeling in new sofas, beds and tables.
But you don’t have to go to the extreme of buying new furniture.
A knitted blanket and cosy cushions can give an old sofa an instant update. A patterned runner is a clever way to cover marks on the kitchen table.
- Add mirrors to reflect light
Mirrors are an excellent way to make rooms feel bigger, lighter and more open.
When staging your home, place mirrors opposite windows for the best effect.
If you don’t have many mirrors, see if you can pick one or two up at a second hand shop.
- Put fresh linen on beds and in bathrooms
It’s tricky to get the balance between hotel and homey when you’re staging a house for sale.
Don’t feel like everything has to be matching, but clean and coordinated linen can create a pulled together look.
Fresh bed sheets and fluffy bath towels are easy ways to give rooms a quick makeover.