Hi, everyone!

Today I’m sharing with you how we staged our office while were were preparing to put our home on the market.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know we live in a 3-bedroom townhouse and we’ve been using the smallest bedroom as an office.

Here are some pictures if you’d like to see:

We had our office upstairs because my sister was staying in our basement for two years. When she left, we started making plans to move our office downstairs and even got some quotes, but my husband was getting tired of his long commute, and it was clear we wouldn’t stay in this home much longer.

Living in a home and staging a home to sell are two different experiences. While we were okay using a bedroom as an office, it’s not recommend in the world of staging. If a property is listed as a 3-bedroom home, then we should have three bedrooms. All rooms should be staged for what their purpose is, and if possible, a bedroom should not have a desk in it, as it suggests a lack of space.

So we had our work cut out for us! We had to move this office into our basement (the post is coming up) and we had to actually stage this as a bedroom even though no one is using it!

After completely clearing out the office, we painted it the same Universal Grey as the rest of the house. Then we had to start from scratch! We had no bed for this room and no budget to buy a new one, so I used a simple staging trick… Guys, I’m spilling my secrets here! Take a look:

That’s right! We used boxes and suitcases with our out-of-season items as a base for the bed!

We outlined the size of a double bed and placed our boxes within these outlines. After placing the boxes, we blew up the inflatable mattress we use for camping.

I bought a bedskirt at Jysk for about 15$ and placed it on the mattress. It hides all the storage under the mattress!

Then I made the bed with the only double-sized duvet I have in my home. The whole colour scheme of this bedroom came from the bedding.

I used a coffee table, curtains and a lamp that I already had in storage.  This room isn’t awesome or anything, but it will allow potential buyers to envision a bedroom in there. It lets them see what size mattress they can place in the room. In this case, we could even have placed a queen-sized bed, but I only had a double. Either way, by placing the mattress in the centre of the room, we allowed potential buyers to see the dimensions of the room.

I have to admit, even I wasn’t sure we could place a queen-sized mattress in here! This space seemed so cramped with our office!

So there you have it, I showed you a trade secret! You’re welcome!