Staging Your Home to Sell! Strategies to Stand Out Amongst the Crowd

Spring is one of the busiest times of the year for the real estate market. The flurry of home sales anticipated for Spring 2021 will only add to what is already a very busy year for real estate transactions. 

The COVID-19 pandemic created a surge in residential home sales, with 42% of homes selling in 2 weeks or less once hitting the market, that’s incredible! 

As with any hot market, once attention is drawn to it and a greater population is aware of the trend, more and more people will be looking to cash in. As the real estate market is red hot right now, we can anticipate more and more homes being listed to capitalize on the seller’s market.

 

So, how can you make sure your home doesn’t go unnoticed amongst the surge of new homes for sale this spring? By using color choices that standout amongst the crowd, of course! 

Staging your home to sell means you must successfully create a beautiful and lasting impression that buyers would feel foolish to pass up.  In this article, we will discuss some of the color tips and strategies that I recommend to clients who are looking to put their homes on the market. 

Curb Appeal – Exterior Staging Colors

As they say, first impressions leave lasting impressions, and there’s no bigger first impression for a home buyer than the initial exterior presence of a home. The exterior colors can offer curb appeal, or be a complete turn off, before an interested buyer even steps foot inside the home, so there are some strategies to take to ensure your home’s exterior is looking its best!

As an experienced color consultant for exterior paint colors, I always tell my clients that there’s a perfect balance between colors that are soothing and appealing, and colors that aren’t making enough of a statement. Let’s face it, sometimes playing it safe can be too understated. We really don’t want to be that boring house on the block.

What do I mean by that? Think of it this way, choosing quiet colors, whether they are soft colors or simply neutral colors, they will work with the home’s exterior to create a calm presence, a sense of harmony. This is appealing, but you need to take it one step further. Once the base color of the home’s exterior is established, there are then opportunities to layer in accent colors with character and pop that give the home more personality. That’s where the fun begins!

For example, a Cape Cod-style home will have a neutral base, with shingles painted white or aged gray from the seaside air, and the accent colors will embolden features of the exterior. The front door may be painted a deep royal blue or royal red, while the window shutters are painted deep emerald green. 

Buyers may find your home interesting if there are bright lively colors on the exterior, but it may not be to their tastes. So, keeping the base neutral and highlighting the home’s features with more exciting colors is a safer bet for garnering buyer interest, and staging your home to sell.

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Try Something New With Your Enclosed Patio This Spring!

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Interior Staging Colors

While the exterior of the home is going to employ one color palette, the interior spaces of the home can have multiple color palettes. However, it is important to have design continuity and common threads of color working in and out of every room. This is where we have to take the flow of colors throughout the home into consideration!

We often talk about how color can enhance the emotional intentions of the space, and this is incredibly evident to homebuyers as they walk through your home for the first time, taking in all of the ambiances.

A finely orchestrated home will have common color hues linking one room to the other with continuous flow, all-the-while, each room will have its own unique color choices and accents heighten the emotional intention of the space. 

Let’s discuss a few rooms as examples:

Primary Bedroom – The purpose and feeling you want to draw out of a bedroom are that of a relaxed, collected, spa-like retreat. Cool color tones that embrace grays, light blues, lavenders, and off-whites are some of the best options to enhance this feeling. If potential buyers walk into a bedroom and see electric tangerine color on the walls, it doesn’t exactly evoke a feeling of relaxation. 

Kitchen – The kitchen is an opportunity to bring some warm, lively, friendly colors into the home. A kitchen is often a place of gathering, comradery, and comfort and that’s when pastel colors like soft yellows, mint greens, and warm whites work very well. A kitchen is also a place begging for bolder accent colors, like deep red cookware, or rich natural woods for cabinetry.

Study/Office – In a room that’s focused on work and efforts that take concentration, it’s best to not excite the mind with highly-animated colors. But, colors that are both elegant and subdued are great for these areas. Sultry browns, greens, slate blues, and even soothing taupes are suitable colors to keep the mind focused, and relaxed. 

There are different opportunities to create an unconscious continuity between spaces. Some examples would be to stay within the same color temperatures, such as cool colors flow from one room to adjoining rooms, or warm colors can do the same. It also helps to have a uniform color for trim and ceilings throughout the home. 

A Little Accent Goes a Long Way!

A way of adding color that is not too much of a commitment in a space, is to add an accent color on only one wall. Give the room a soft neutral color for three of the walls, and add color to one wall to give it an identity. The one color accent wall can make the statement of home office, bedroom, or even a library. As long as it is not a color that is too feminine, you are opening up the buyers mind to many uses for the room!

Closing the Deal With Color!

When homebuyers are checking out properties, they don’t often remember every detail of the home, but they do remember the feeling or impression the home left with them. Were the colors positive and lively, or was the place dark and uninteresting? Were features in each room accented with just the right amount of color? Or was the space dull and lifeless, only serving its functional purpose? 

I often hear that realtors are suggesting homeowners paint every room inside a home a light gray with white trim. Imagine if every home on the market took their advice, there is nothing memorable about any home a buyer would have seen! Nothing that differentiates between one home and the next!

The right color choices will leave the best lasting impression on potential homebuyers, so don’t be surprised if a home sits on the market longer than expected if it has dated colors that don’t convey space well. 

Are you staging your home to sell? Let’s talk about it! I love helping people transform their homes into sought-after buyer opportunities.