Discover practical, proven tips to help you sell your home quickly without lowering the price. Learn how smart preparation and effective home staging can attract serious buyers and maximise your property’s value.
Head or heart? The balance shifts from person to person, but when it comes to buying a home, emotion almost always plays a part. That’s precisely why sellers have such a powerful opportunity: by staging a lifestyle that resonates with their ideal buyer, they can create that all‑important “wow factor” the moment someone walks through the door.
At the Spacestagers we tend to think about every property that we stage as a book. The building and its layout are the binding whilst the furniture and accessories are the words and pictures that tell the story.
When staging a lived in property, we suggest that our clients try to think back to their own first impressions of the property and to consider what aspects of their home made them fall in love with and decide to buy it. In most cases (unless they have made significant changes to the layout, or the local area has dramatically changed) these factors remain helpful in determining the target market. Maybe the location is particularly cosmopolitan and will appeal to a young professional. Or it is in the catchment for a great school, thus making the perfect family home. Perhaps it has a fabulous kitchen diner that opens out into the garden for amazing parties. These are all factors that can help to dictate the “wow factor” of the property and will influence the way that it is staged for selling.
The next step is to set the scene in a way that helps buyers picture themselves living this lifestyle — and to make that lifestyle feel genuinely within reach. In essence, your goal is to make everything look effortless, showcasing the home as the perfect backdrop for the life they aspire to.
There is certainly an art to doing this well and it is also intrinsically important to remember that there is a difference between staging a ‘show home’ and staging a ‘lived in home’. Techniques such as a dining table, beautifully laid for “tonight’s” dinner party, or an appetising breakfast tray artistically placed at the foot of a stylishly turned down bed, will be more suggestive of a Marie Celeste mystery, than an aspirational home, if used in the wrong setting.
However, a well-stocked wine rack (casually alluding to life goals, such as being able to savour rather than drain a bottle of wine), interesting cookery books and ingredients suggesting that the current owners enjoy travel and fine dining experiences. Some garden lighting such as lanterns or candles and a basket of cosy blankets, will inform the impression that the indoor and outdoor space is regularly used for entertaining and relaxed living.
If your property is a happy and lively family home that is a lovely, and hugely sellable aspect to focus on. There is a high chance that this will already be apparent, to some extent, from the energy and atmosphere of your home and all you need to do is demonstrate how easy this is to achieve. I have already mentioned the part that emotion plays on our decision to purchase a property and I believe that it is fair to say that if a potential buyer finds more than one property that meets their requirements then it will almost certainly be their gut instinct that makes the final decision. So, keep it feeling homely, don’t clear away the fun, but do remove the chaos. Keep it tidy to suggest that this is a home that is relaxed and maintainable. Perhaps, show that there is a place to take off/store muddy boots and raincoats after that fabulous walk in the nearby woods. Demonstrate or allude to a balance between family togetherness and personal space. Legitimise the suggestion, think practical and believable, but above all keep it aesthetically pleasing.
Ultimately, the aims of property staging are to make a home aspirational but attainable, to determine and to deliver it’s “wow factor” and to demonstrate to potential buyers that they belong in the space.
The Spacestagers Case Study, Milton Road, Cambridge
Services Provided: Consultation & Staging Report, Staging Service with Furniture & Accessories Booster Package,
Result Achieved: The property sold in less than two weeks, with multiple offers over the asking price.
In this instance, we pinpointed the “wow factor” as coming from having a set of bi fold doors in the two main living rooms. These enabled the whole corner of the house to open onto the garden and patio area creating a fabulous sense of letting the outside area merge with the inside. Prior to staging, neither the layout nor the furnishing of the rooms put any focus on this selling point (despite the owners stressing how important this had been in their own purchasing decision). We rearranged the furniture in the main living room so that the focal point became the garden, instead of the TV and styled the adjacent room as a dining/entertaining area; rather than an overcrowded ‘man cave’. We also made sure that the patio area was staged as a welcoming indoor-outdoor space for alfresco entertaining and relaxing. These were quick and cost-effective changes that had a huge impact on the feel and the function of the property and in turn led to the desired speedy sale.
“We had to place our house on the market pretty quickly and Sam made time to come in and stage the place within her already busy schedule. She had great advice on room arrangement and what to declutter, and the house DID sell quickly with multiple offers over asking!”
Janesta Boudreau
It can be a common misconception that property staging is for show homes or unfurnished properties. Yes, it is undeniably important in those scenarios, however, even if your property is already fully furnished, if you want to sell your home quickly and achieve the best possible price then staging is the most sensible investment that you can make. Whether you opt to carry out the process yourself or employ the expertise of a home stager this will be time/money well spent.
Doing it yourself requires you to be objective and to see your home through fresh eyes. When we look around our homes, it is very easy to see what we want to see and to ignore what we don’t. I highly recommend photographing each room/area and then looking at the images critically. Ask yourself questions such as, are there jumbled wires and multiple extension leads in a corner of the room? You may look past these every day, but when a potential buyer is scrolling through images on Right Move or walking around your property, this will look untidy and therefore noticeable, maybe only subliminally, but it will be seen. I’m not suggesting that your home won’t sell because there are not enough plug sockets, but it could be one of many small imperfections that begin to build doubt. Distracting from the issue is so easy. You could simply unplug and pack away some of the offending wires, neaten them up and tuck them behind a piece of furniture or buy a simple cable tidy box to store them in. The cost of these solutions is free or negligible and in the visual scheme of things will have a positive impact. Similarly, a photograph may alert you to a haphazard pile of clutter on top of a cupboard or under a bed. Ordinarily unnoticeable due to being just out of your chosen sightline but when the room is looked at objectively and by someone new it will most likely suggest that there is inadequate storage. Decluttering is the perfect solution, it is cheap, feels proactive towards a fresh start and, given the saying “one person’s junk is another person’s treasure” you may even profit from the process.
Once you have studied the images of each room and created a list of any problems that need resolving it is a good idea to look at the images again but this time as a photo roll. By doing so you can start to get a feel for how your home will look on Right Move or in a marketing brochure. This is a hugely important exercise as pretty much every person that decides to physically attend a viewing will have initially had their attention grabbed by the photo roll. Your home needs to look as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Appearing clean, tidy and beautifully coordinated across all images will naturally encourage people to want to step inside. One of the easiest ways to achieve a coordinated look is through colour so deciding on a palette and then repeating this throughout the property should have the desired effect. Our Style Booster packages are a cost-effective way of bringing cohesion to your existing furnishing. These comprise of a thoughtfully curated and stylish range of soft furnishing, accessories and artwork that can be hired to elevate your interior and make sure that your home looks, not just eye-catchingly fabulous and memorable on Right Move but, most importantly, sets the scene and tells the story of it being a desirable home.
If you are time rich, staging your own property is a feasible option, however most people live very busy lives and employing a home stager will make sure that you have a focussed and effective staging proposal tailored to your property, budget and circumstances. We offer several services, ranging from our DIY staging plan through to complete project management. Ultimately, our goal is to capture the heart of your buyer and create the biggest visual impact with the smallest amount of upheaval and expense. We love what we do and are here to help!
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