Home Staging: The Art of Creating a Home

Home Staging is more than just making a home look pretty. It’s one of the best actions you can take for listing your home.

Home Sale Photoshop

Your home’s value is based on weighing the best features against the property drawbacks. Home staging can add forgiveness to any property negatives and highlight the best parts.

For example, parquet floor is pretty universally on the outs style-wise, but replacing all your floors before selling isn’t always cost-effective. With the right rugs, coffee tables, and chairs, chosen in a popular style, you can pull attention away from the floors. A truly talented home stager can even make parquet look stylish.

This can be applied to outside the property too. A bland backyard can be spruced up with the right, eye-catching patio furniture. Show potential buyers what could be done with the space, if only they would move in.

It’s not necessarily about hiding any negatives though; there’s nothing sneaky about it. It’s more to encourage people how to work around them and essentially saying ‘it’s really not that bad.’

Furniture placement plays a big part in home staging because it shows buyers how to get the best use out of awkward layouts and small space. This is huge for condos!

The Science of Home Staging

Home staging is so much more than prettying up a house. There’s a genuine science behind it. Professionals don’t just pick a random colour they think would look nice. Every decision is based on studies that show what factors influence buyers most and the most common perceptions.

To sell a home, the sellers, agent, and home stager, must create an environment that potential buyers can envision themselves in. Part of this is, as sad as it may seem, taking you out of it. Visible household items and family photos are the first thing put away during showings. It’s hard for someone to picture a property as their new home when it’s still so clearly someone else’s.

A neutral coat of paint goes a long way for this reason. Paint colour reveals personality in a home, so going with a neutral grey helps to create a blank canvas for the new buyer.

I mentioned in the last section that staging can work wonders to highlight a property’s best features. The science is about drawing the eye to that feature and calling out why it works.

Let me demonstrate a few of these ideas on a listing I did recently.

28 Sylwood Crescent

Already a gorgeous home with plenty of desirable space, I brought in a home stager to take it up another notch.

To emphasize the ample countertop room, we removed all items from the counters, save for a few decorative pieces. The idea was to get rid of clutter, by going minimal, showing off just how much space there was. What we did put on the counter was some brightly covered décor (green pears) to bring the eye immediately up to that counter.

Take a look at photos of the kitchen: what jumps out first?

For some perspective, here’s the kitchen before staging. Take note of how much bigger the counters look in the after shot.

We also used staging on this listing to soften and modernize the parquet floors throughout. Modern colour schemes are used with contemporary furniture. Cool greys and eye-catching blues make the furniture the focus of the room, rather than the typically dated floors.

Doing this changes the conversation from ‘oh, we’ll have to replace all the floors’ to ‘what a cozy room! Do you think our furniture would work here?’. That’s exactly what we want!

The biggest change we made to the house was a paint job throughout the main floor. The existing colour matched the owner’s personality, but to sell a property, a space needs to be neutral enough for buyers to see their own personality fitting there.

The kitchen was originally an earthy green, while the living and dining areas were painted in a rich, dark brown. Gorgeous colours, but nearly neutral enough. Instead, we painted a very simple, off-white on the walls. Not only did it make things neutral, but it also made the rooms feel significantly larger too.

In the bedrooms, we took a more décor-specific approach. Pillows, duvet covers and artwork were selected in order to complement the existing furniture and wall colours.

For example, brown and blue is a popular colour palette. In one bedroom where the walls were already a tan colour, blue pillows and bedding were brought in to neutralize the warm walls and add interest. The artwork elevated the room’s presentation as well, taking it from a simple square area to a homey, inviting retreat.

How to List and Stage in Vaughan

When I’m listing a home in Vaughan, I regularly call in Sandra Bartel Smith from Fab Places & Neat Spaces. Browse some of the fantastic work she’s done here.

Moving forward with your property listing, I strongly recommend considering home staging as an option. You can increase your asking price and offers, and likely reduce the amount of time on the market.

Next time you’re viewing a listing (in person or online) take a closer look at the photos. See how many staging tricks you can spot!