Staging your home to sell is proven to increase your sale price up to seven percent, so it’s worth your time to evaluate your place room by room and decide what changes to make. That’s why I’ve created a new room-by-room staging series.
Selling your home? Sandra Best Decor offers tips for staging each room to appeal to home buyers. Let’s start with the living room.
The living room (or family room) is where family and friends spend a lot of time together, relaxing, visiting and entertaining. At this time, prospective buyers are looking for a living room that is cozy yet roomy enough for large gatherings.
Declutter
When you declutter your living room of excess furniture, it will instantly feel more spacious, and the positive features of the room will be revealed.
Great example: the living room above had so much furniture in it that the window was blocked by a sofa.
One of our main interventions was to come up with a functional layout for this odd-shaped living room. We placed the dining table closer to the kitchen and separated the living room into two sections- a seating area with a television, and an area to relax next to the fireplace. Remember that staging is about suggesting a lifestyle to potential home buyers.
Identify the focal point
A focal point is a feature that captures the eye as you immediately walk into a room.
Focal points should be highlighted in every room of your house when staging your home for sale.
Your goal is to enhance and draw attention to these special features so that home buyers will fall in love with your house.
There is a fireplace in this living room- can you see it?
After moving a few things around, the beautiful fireplace can be seen! By adding a darker color on the fireplace wall and adding an old wood beam on it, with art, the fireplace became the main feature of this space.
if you don’t have a fireplace, here are some common focal points to accentuate:
• Angled walls and ceilings, beams, arches
• Large windows with a great view, a gorgeous bay window, arched windows
• Beautiful winding staircase
• French doors
• Built-in bookcases and entertainment centres
• A feature wall, such as old brick or reclaimed lumber
Refresh the color
Updating the wall color is the least expensive update you can do to prepare your living room for the market.
In this condo we suggested the following colors from our partner Benjamin Moore:
Gray Owl for all the walls
Simple White for the trim
Amherst Gray for the fireplace place wall.
Accentuate Odd corners
Many spaces have an area no one seems to know what to do with! When you are staging a home, we need to make sure that we leave nothing to the imagination.
In this living room, there was an odd, dark corner next to the fireplace. The homeowners had an oversized bookcase that didn’t work with the space. Creativity was in order! We thought about adding shelves to make a built-in area. After much consideration, I thought it might be best to provide a storage area for wood, since the fireplace is woodburning. That option was the best at 55$, tax included!
The result is amazing and adds warmth to this living room.
Let the light shine
Natural light is the most preferable form of lighting in home interior design. Natural light makes everyone feel good by infusing a room with sunny warmth and a feeling of spaciousness!
When you are staging the living room, you should focus attention on the window treatments. Are the windows shrouded in dark, heavy drapes? Are you covering a beautiful view that home buyers might miss seeing?
Your goal is to let in as much natural light as possible. Pull back window treatments all the way, wash the windows until they sparkle, remove screens or open the blinds.
If you have a spectacular window with a great view, simply leave it bare.
Since our unit’s windows were already blocked by a giant tree, we decided to remove the window dressing and trim some of the the tree branches to let maximum light inside the unit!
