The Importance Of Cleaning
A spotless home creates a lasting impression.
"Cleaning is not just about making things look good on the surface; it's about creating a space that feels fresh, welcoming, and ready for new beginnings"--
To effectively prepare your home for sale in today’s market, it is essential to carefully consider a few preliminary techniques such as Decluttering, Depersonalizing, and Cleaning. These critical steps not only help to create a tidy and inviting atmosphere but also ensure that your home is thoroughly clean and presentable before the staging process begins. By taking the time to focus on these fundamental aspects, you increase the chances of attracting potential buyers.
Let’s delve into the critical steps of ensuring your home is clean before staging. A well-maintained and spotless home not only attracts potential buyers but also creates a lasting impression that can significantly influence their purchasing decision.
Deep Clean Every Surface:
Ensure that every surface, including floors, countertops, and walls, is spotless. Use appropriate cleaning products for different materials to avoid damage.
Focus on Kitchens and Bathrooms:
These areas are critical in home staging. Clean appliances, sinks, toilets, and showers thoroughly. Consider replacing old fixtures and adding fresh towels or decorative items.
Tip: No matter how water spotted and dull your tub, shower, and sink faucets are, car wax like Turtle Wax will make them look like new and help them stay that way. You can use Turtle Wax safely on nonporous surfaces, like marble countertops, appliances, chrome faucets, and shower doors to prevent watermarks.
How to Clean Windows:
You can hire a professional or just clean them yourself using a simple technique, using dish soap, vinegar and water, a mop, a microfiber cloth and voila! Clean windows in home staging is a very important point. You want to let as much natural light in as possible to convey a feeling of freshness.
Clean your Light Fixtures:
Dust and polish light fixtures to ensure they shine brightly.
Neutralize Odors:
Use air purifiers or natural deodorizers to eliminate odors. Fresh flowers or lightly scented candles can add a pleasant aroma.
Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning:
Professionally clean carpets and upholstery to remove stains and freshen up fabrics. Consider using neutral-colored slipcovers if needed.
Outdoor Spaces:
Don’t forget to clean outdoor areas like patios and porches. Power wash decks, clean outdoor furniture, and tidy up the garden.
Attention to Detail:
Pay attention to small details like cleaning baseboards, light switches, and door handles. These can make a big difference in the overall appearance.
By following these cleaning techniques, you can enhance the appeal of a home and create a positive impression on potential buyers.
Note:
We are excited to provide you with a comprehensive Cleaning Must-Haves List. This list serves as both reference material and a practical shopping guide to ensure you have everything you need to maintain a clean and organized environment.
Shopping Made Easy:
We've made it convenient for you to purchase these items through Amazon. Simply use our list as a shopping guide to ensure you have all the essentials at your fingertips. Please note that by using our recommended links, you are supporting our efforts to provide quality educational content. Your purchases through these links help us earn small commissions, which enable us to continue offering valuable resources.
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Coming soon!
We are currently in the process of meticulously developing a comprehensive Home Staging Online Course filled with great tips and insights that is specifically designed to effectively meet the diverse needs of home sellers. This course is ideally suited for those individuals who are interested in selling their home while also wanting to take on the rewarding and creative experience of staging their property themselves. Stay tuned for more information as we finalize the details of this exciting opportunity.
Why Furniture Retailers are Ideal for Home Staging Services
Furniture retailers are an established resource that can naturally offer a valuable service to homeowners.
The furniture retail market has faced serious challenges in the last few years, such as economic uncertainties, supply chain disruptions, and more competition. However, furniture retailers are a valuable and established resource that can effectively offer home staging services. By doing so, they not only provide an important service to homeowners but also have a significant opportunity to diversify their business offerings and enhance their profitability.
Why We Are Perfectly Positioned to Offer Home Staging Services
Despite the hurdles of the past few years, I see a unique opportunity for us to diversify and thrive by offering home staging services. Here's why this makes perfect sense, and how we can help our clients.
Competitive Pricing Advantage
With my experience as a furniture dealer, I can get the best prices. When we purchase for our clients, we provide great rates without losing quality. This allows our clients to have beautifully staged homes at affordable prices, increasing their profits.
In-House Delivery and Logistics Services
With our logistics experience, we ensure a smooth and efficient staging process, whether partnering with our local furniture rental providers, or by offering our own products. This convenience ensures that our clients receive timely and reliable service, reducing stress and allowing them to focus on other aspects of their real estate process.
Inventory Knowledge Advantage
Our experience gives us many options for home furnishings in different styles. While we don't have a physical showroom at the moment, we provide quality products through our online store, serving customers for 23 years. This digital showroom is a useful and updated catalog with current prices and product availability. For staging projects, we enhance our selections by finding items beyond our online store, either by shopping for specific needs or using local rental sources. Our Pinterest account also offers great inspiration for everyone involved. We start collaboration with clients by creating a simple mood board to capture the desired look based on the homes’s personality and staging guidelines, then source the needed items to realize that vision.
Existing Customer Base
We already have an established brand and customer base of homeowners and real estate professionals. This network allows us to offer exclusive deals and personalized services to our clients, enhancing their experience and ensuring they receive the best possible staging solutions.
Expertise in Interior Decoration
We know what looks good and what sells, and we are committed to using this knowledge to enhance the appeal of your home. By understanding the specific principles of room layout and design, we can create spaces that captivate potential buyers and increase the likelihood of a successful sale.
Feel free to reach out to us at your convenience.
Contact us with your Home Staging needs, and we’ll be more than glad to collaborate with you on creating the perfect presentation for your space.
Home Staging Versus Decorating
Home Staging is temporary, and is a marketing tool.
“I love this quote about perfection being achieved when there is nothing left to take away. It nicely distinguishes between home staging and interior design. In an often "more is more" world, I'm comforted by the fact that staging is confirmation of how less is more”, Debra Gould.
Home staging and interior design serve different purposes, each with its own focus and goals.
Home staging is the process of preparing a home for sale by making it appealing to potential buyers. The primary objective is to showcase the property’s best features and create an inviting atmosphere that allows buyers to envision themselves living in the space. This often involves decluttering, rearranging furniture, adding decor, and sometimes even making minor repairs or updates. Staging emphasizes creating a neutral and attractive environment that can appeal to a wide range of tastes and preferences.
Conversely, interior design involves creating functional and aesthetically pleasing spaces for the homeowners' personal preference and lifestyle. Interior designers work closely with clients to develop a design concept that reflects their tastes and needs, which may include selecting colors, furniture, textiles, and layout adjustments. Unlike staging, which is often temporary and geared towards selling, interior design is about crafting a lasting environment that enhances the quality of life for the residents.
In summary, home staging focuses on selling a property through strategic enhancements, while interior design is about personalizing and improving the home's functionality and aesthetics for the current occupants.
Home staging and interior design serve different purposes, although they may overlap in some areas.
Home Staging:
Focuses on preparing a home for sale.
Aims to enhance the property's appeal to potential buyers.
Involves the use of neutral colors and minimal accessories to allow buyers to envision themselves in the space.
Often features a temporary arrangement of furniture and decor that highlights the property's strengths.
Less personal and more commercial in approach to create a universally appealing environment.
Interior Design:
Centers on creating functional and aesthetically pleasing spaces tailored to the homeowner's tastes and lifestyle.
Involves a personalized design process where the homeowner's preferences, colors, and furnishings play a central role.
Uses a variety of styles and elements to reflect the homeowner's personality.
Includes long-term furnishings and decor that are intended to be permanent and comfortable.
In summary, while home staging focuses on presenting a property for sale in the best light, interior design is about cultivating a unique and personalized living environment.
Virtual Home Staging: Is Jumping In Worth Your Time?
Ai animation work space. Is it worth the hype?
Written by Debra Gould
There’s been a lot of talk about virtual home staging.
As the technology improves, it’s only natural to wonder whether virtual home staging will replace the real thing.
Virtual home staging is done by computer. This eliminates the need for physical furniture and accessories.
Potential buyers will see what’s possible for each room, without the expense of putting real items in place.
As you can see from this photo, this is a pretty convincing family room set up. At first glance at least.
However, when you look closely at the curtains on the left, you’ll notice they aren’t real. I purchased this image from a stock image site and it wasn’t marked whether it was an actual photograph or computer generated.
And does anyone care?
Imagine if this virtual home staging photo showed more of the room. Would it be an acceptable listing photo? Yes, it would do a much better marketing job than showing a vacant room.
Because people are attracted to “homes” not empty houses.
I’ve long written about why home staging works. In a nutshell it romances the buyer. When done well, home staging showcases a home’s best features. It helps buyers fall in love while they imagine a new chapter in their lives living in this “dream home.”
Virtual Staging Disappears As Soon As You Visit in Real Life
The problem with virtual home staging is that at some point the potential buyer will want to see the home in person before making an offer.
That’s when they’ll be wandering through empty rooms. Let’s face it, unless it’s brand new, most vacant homes look kind of sad. Buyers will notice every ding on a wall, every old furniture mark in the carpeting, the cable wires hanging out of the walls, etc.
They’ll wonder if the seller is desperate to sell because they don’t live there anymore.
And if the owner is still living there, they’ll wander through rooms that look nothing like the listing photos that attracted them in the first place.
These factors alone are why I’m not a fan of virtual home staging. It won’t romance buyers and get them caught up in making an offer when they’re seeing the home in real life.
If you’re in a real estate market with lots of foreign buyers or property investors, perhaps these concerns are less of an issue. The potential buyers aren’t buying their home, they’re buying an investment they’ll rent out, or leave empty.
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Thank you Debra Gould for your insights on AI rendering. We completely agree with you on the important distinction between simply entering a home and truly having an immersive experience that creates a meaningful connection for the buyer on an emotional level. While virtual staging may be practical and convenient in many ways, it ultimately falls short in delivering that unique atmosphere and warmth that only a well-staged physical space can provide.
Learning new software can indeed be quite challenging and daunting at times. Sometimes, you may find it necessary to outsource the service which can complicate the process further and make it even harder to effectively share your ideas and vision with others.
Imagination
“Home is the nicest word there is”.
Imagining a space as it is to be thoughtfully lived in is truly our creative goal. It is a fun and engaging journey to encounter the unique feel and distinguishing features of a home, to enhance them effectively and bring them forth in a meaningful way. In our exciting new service, we aim to create inspired and thoughtfully designed spaces that genuinely charge the buyers' imagination and help them fall deeply in love with your property.
“Home is the nicest word there is”.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
There’s a great deal to say about the evolving meaning of home in today’s world. Our current nomadic lifestyle has significantly lost the deep connection to the experience of home, a place where roots were established and a strong sense of family and community thrived. In this contemporary era, ‘home’ is increasingly perceived as more of a feeling than a tangible place; it can truly be found anywhere, shaped by our experiences and relationships. Homes can be made at any time.
The concept of "home" develops through a combination of physical spaces, emotional connections, and psychological significance. It's a place where we feel safe, secure, and comfortable, and it often holds deep personal meaning and memories. Developing this concept involves creating a physical space that meets our needs, fostering emotional bonds within the home, and recognizing the psychological impact of the environment.
Let us help you set the stage for a new set of emotional cues that will assist your visitors and potential buyers in activating the beginnings of a vibrant memory bank, fostering a deeper connection to your home.
As a start, we will help you discover and uncover the true spirit of your house—those unique qualities and characteristics that will make it the perfect new home for your future buyer.
A time of day. Light.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Prepare A Room For A Photoshoot
A cluttered room can be transformed into a spacious, open space that feels comfortable.
Photos are incredibly important for effectively staging your home and presenting it to potential buyers.
We can assist you in getting a room of your choice meticulously ready for a professional photoshoot as you prepare to collaborate closely with your realtor. We can visit your home for several hours to help organize the space, offer practical suggestions on decor and arrangement, and thoroughly prepare you for stunning photography that showcases your property at its absolute best, making it truly stand out in the market.
This insightful process will demonstrate how to effectively enhance the overall appeal of each room in your home. We will assist you with the transformation of your first room, providing valuable guidance and ongoing support to ensure it becomes truly inviting for potential buyers.
Up to two hours. Additional hours at a lower rate.
Explore our wide array of other staging services designed to meet your specific needs.
What is Staging?
The many benefits of home staging.
Home staging can significantly impact a property's marketability, leading to faster sales and potentially higher prices by making a home more appealing and easier for buyers to visualize themselves living there.
Here's a more detailed look at the effects of home staging:
Positive Impacts of Home Staging:
Faster Sales:
Staged homes sell faster because they attract more buyer interest and make a positive first impression.
Higher Sale Price:
Staging can help homes sell for more money by highlighting their best features and making them more appealing to a wider range of buyers.
Increased Buyer Interest:
A well-staged home is more likely to capture the attention of potential buyers, leading to more viewings and offers.
Improved Curb Appeal:
Staging the exterior, or "curb appeal," is crucial for making a positive first impression and drawing buyers in.
Enhanced Visual Appeal:
Staging helps declutter and depersonalize a home, allowing buyers to envision living there rather than focusing on the current owners' belongings.
Highlighting Features and Downplaying Flaws:
Staging can draw attention to a home's best features and minimize the impact of any flaws, such as outdated decor or minor repairs.
Better Photography:
Well-staged homes photograph better, leading to more appealing listing photos that attract more potential buyers.
Emotional Connection:
Staging creates an atmosphere that allows buyers to connect emotionally with the property, making them more likely to fall in love with the space.
Let’s work together.
Staging an Occupied Home
The importance of creating a first good impression.
Why do you need to stage your occupied home for potential buyers? Staging can significantly improve the overall presentation and appeal of your space, making it more inviting and attractive. By showcasing your home's best features, you create an environment that helps prospective buyers envision themselves living there.
Staging a home offers numerous benefits, enhancing its marketability: Faster Sales: Staged homes spend less time on the market, making the selling process quicker. Higher Offers: Buyers are often willing to pay more for a staged home, leading to higher sale prices. So why would you not consider staging your home when you have the opportunity? Good staging takes effort and planning, making a strong first impression valuable.
The process:
Staging an occupied home is a significant commitment that requires thoughtful preparation and meticulous attention to detail. It can be an especially emotional time, as you need to neutralize and reframe your personal belongings, while also adjusting your lifestyle to appeal to potential buyers.
But the positive outcomes of a well-staged home are not just an uplifting experience; they represent a truly freeing opportunity and the vital path to that dream you’ve been postponing for so long, paving the way for a fresh start and a new life ahead.
We will help you prepare your home for listing with your realtor. Let's schedule a convenient time to visit your home and do a Walk & Talk DIY Consultation. This will take us up to two hours. We will provide verbal recommendations for any repairs and upgrades that need to be done and everything you need to take the next steps to DIY. Note-taking is recommended. A consultation fee is applied at the end of the session, additional hours are billed at a lower rate. This option includes a complementary To-Do List an Ultimate Cleaning Guide and an Open House Preparation List. A written report is available for an extra fee if desired.
If you want us to come back, we can also help you stage your home with a visit that lasts half a day or a full day:
Half-Day Staging Package - Up to 4 hours.
Full-Day Staging Package - Up to 7 hours.
We will team up with you to rearrange your furniture, declutter and remove personal items to showcase your home's best features. We'll advise on what to keep and what to remove to create a simple, appealing space that helps potential buyers imagine themselves living there.
Sometimes, the best way to show off your home is by adding new accessories. We can Shop For You for an hourly rate if needed. We can also rent accessory packages.
*The home must be prepped and cleaned before the stager arrives.
Explore our various other services to discover the full range of options we offer.
Staging a Vacant Home
Help your potential buyers feel themselves in the home.
Vacant home staging involves furnishing an empty house with your own or rented furniture to make it feel lived-in and visually appealing. This helps buyers connect emotionally with the home and can lead to a higher sale price.
How it works
We offer a consultation to evaluate your home, including its style, features, and curb appeal, as well as your goals. We'll inspect each room, take measurements and photos, and recommend how much furniture is needed for each space. We'll provide a rental pricing list for furniture and accessories, giving you an idea of the total cost per room, including delivery/removal fees and taxes.
Stage the whole house for a unified look rather than just a few rooms. This creates better flow and can lead to a faster sale. Once we decide on the next steps together, we will then proceed to sign a formal agreement, and shortly thereafter, we will get to work sourcing all the necessary elements for your project.
On staging day, we'll oversee the process to ensure your home is beautifully prepared for listing.
There is a consultation fee for one to one and a half hours, paid by check at the end of the session. Additional hours may be billed at a reduced rate.
Accessorizing
Invite ideas.
In home staging, accessorizing involves using items like artwork, mirrors, and decorative objects to enhance a space's style, tie it together, and make it more appealing to potential buyers.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Purpose of Accessorizing:
Enhance Style and Architecture: Accessories can highlight the unique features of a home and create a cohesive look.
Tie a Room Together: Accessories can help create a sense of flow and unity within a space.
Enliven a Space: Adding accessories can make a room feel more inviting and interesting.
Appeal to a Wider Audience: By using neutral and stylish accessories, home stagers aim to create a space that appeals to a broad range of potential buyers.
Examples of Accessories:
Artwork
Mirrors
Decorative objects (e.g., vases, lamps, throws)
Plants
Curtains and rugs
Accessorizing as the Last Step:
Accessorizing is often considered the final step in the home staging process, after furniture placement and cleaning.
Let us know if you want us to help with accessories. We can choose rental packages based on your needs, or shop for you at an hourly rate.