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How To Stage Your Home with Ease

Everyone who has ever bought or sold their home knows that the process is stressful. Not only is this your home, your sanctuary, even likelier your largest investment, but this is your life; that is interrupted because of this.

We attended a home staging workshop on Saturday that was hosted by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Chris DeBoo of Simplystaging provided us with not only the basics of home staging, but a little insiders lesson on how home staging can actually make the process less stressful. A Designer Spot outlines 3 additional ways you can maximize the staging potential of your home.

Chris educated us first by reminding us that while this may be your home, the minute you decide to put your home on the market, you must begin preparing your home by turning it into a house. Your house is now the product you are selling, and more importantly, you have a lot on the line when selling your house. This is arguably the most important emotional decision you must make in regards to this process.

After you’ve wrapped your mind around the idea that your house needs to be sold, you can actually reduce the stress you place on yourself by staging your home effectively.

Chris reminded us about curb appeal, and the utmost importance of it, and all though some of the audience lived in the suburbs of Chicago, that this is equally of importance for the city dwellers (including condo buildings also). The first step to getting your home sold is getting people inside your house (or condo). If something is unappealing from the outside of your “product,” than they aren’t likely to move further in the process of touring your house. Remove that choice and clean up the first impression your buyer will see.

Once inside, we know that the basics of staging include cleaning the home thoroughly, removing personal items, reducing clutter, and neutralizing the color palette. In addition, another way you can ease the staging process on top of known variables like painting, cleaning etc., is packing immediately. Chris advised us that as soon as you’ve made the decision to sell your home, that you can not pack early enough! I repeat, you can not pack too early! Packing away items such as pictures, mementos, and collections is a great place to start. Even in the days leading up to the realtors visit can be spent preparing.

Any item unnecessary to living in the space, can/should also be removed. This forces you to reduce furniture like bookcases which are not needed for staging. By removing furniture – you’ve just added visual square footage to your “product.” We pulled an example from Chris’ site, to illustrate this point.

Finally, last in the process is what most people are familiar with, strategically placing furniture and neutralized accessories.

After Chris so neatly laid out for us a few insider tips to staging your home like a professional, she reminded us that without ‘stuff’ in your “product,” you have less furniture to dust, fewer clothes to wash, and less to pack while your waiting to sell your home. Thanks again Chris for the great seminar!

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