Definition of home staging
If you’re preparing to sell your home, you’ve probably heard the term “home staging” and wondered, what is home staging and why does it matter? Home staging is the process of arranging furniture, décor, and accessories in a way that highlights your home’s best features, makes rooms feel inviting, and helps buyers picture themselves living there. Instead of just listing your house as-is, staging turns it into a market-ready property that stands out in photos and showings—often leading to faster offers and a higher selling price.
Home staging became a part of my world in 2002 when I sold my first home. Back then I didn’t call it home staging. It was just a way to get the house look nice and presentable to home buyers.
You didn’t want to leave the house a mess or have laundry everywhere because that would leave a bad impression. And you didn’t want buyers to have a bad impression of you or your house.
According to google, home staging is “the activity or practice of styling and furnishing a property for sale in such a way as to enhance its attractiveness to potential buyers.” But what is home staging and how do you do it? You may have seen some examples of it on TV or as you walked through houses yourself.
Why is home staging important?
Home staging is important because it is a marketing tool used by realtors to show your home in the best possible light.
Just like when you get ready for a date, you want to look your best, right? Same thing goes for your home when you put it on the real estate market. Home staging is a way to let buyers imagine THEMSELVES living in the home.
By staging your home to sell, it helps sell homes faster and makes it more appealing to buyers. If you want to sell your home, there are a few tasks that need to be done in order to appeal to buyers. As a home seller, your decor may not neutral enough to bring in home buyers. That is why it’s important to bring up the difference between home staging and interior decorating.
What is Home Staging vs Interior Decorating?
As mentioned before, home staging is a way to make the house more appealing to buyers. I tell my clients that home staging is neutralizing their home decor. You may decorate your home with your favorite wall colors, design style or sporting decor but that’s not something that all buyers want to see.
Home staging is the opposite of home decorating.
We need to attract a broader audience by neutralizing colors and decor in the home. That is what home staging does because it allows homeowners to envision themselves living in it and adding their own flare to the home. In fact, per the National Association of Realtors “47% of buyers agents cited that home staging had an effect on most buyers’ view of the home.”
Almost half the people! That’s amazing and not something that homeowners are aware of.
Here is another fact:
“82% of buyers agents said staging a home made it easier for the buyer to visualize the property as a future home”.
Once you go through the process of staging your home (or get it ready to sell whichever term you prefer), the house looks better and is ready for buyers to move in.
How does home staging work?
There are a few ways to stage your home. As the home seller, you can do-it-yourself or hire a home stager to help you stage your home.
When you hire a home stager, they may do some or all of these in their home staging process. It normally starts with a home staging consultation either over the phone, in person or online. They may ask you as the home seller to leave the house while they stage the house for you. Some home stagers will work with the home sellers to move items around and stage the house together.
Any decluttering or cleaning is not done by the home stager. As the home seller, have some boxes or totes ready to start packing things away to help stage your home.
Depending on your home, a home stager can bring in rental furniture and accessories or work with what you have in the home to stage it.
A home stager can also go shopping on your behalf to find things they need to stage the home such as bedding, artwork, or lamps.
Normally the home stager is the last person in the house before the photographer shows up so that your house is ready for your online photos. Any construction work should be done before the home stager does the final staging.
What is home staging: Key benefits to home sellers
Home staging benefits home sellers including faster sales, higher offers and online appeal. By staging your home, your home stands out among the competition because it looks move-in ready. There is less work for the buyers and the home is ready for new owners.
A well-staged homes also creates a great first impression! And when you make a great impression, buyers will remember and make offers on your home. In fact, sometimes this can result in multiple offers and sometimes over asking price.
What is Home Staging: Common Myths Explained
#1 Empty the house and remove all your furniture
This is not necessary. You may think your furniture is old fashioned and you have the budget to get rental furniture. Everything has to be cohesive and you bought furniture for your home to fit the style. That is why I prefer to reuse the furniture you already have in your home.
#2 Your own décor is fine and you don’t need to stage
Remember home staging is where we are decorating to sell and not decorating to live. So your décor may be too much. There was one house that I staged where the couch blocked the entrance and there were too many pots, home décor and just stuff! We moved the couch away from the door, removed a few items from the room and now the room felt larger and more inviting. If you think your décor is fine, think again. You’re going to need to pair down the home décor to help stage the house.
#3 Home staging costs a lot of money
If you just need a consultation that will not be that costly. Home staging consultations cost between $150-$600 for up to 2 hours to give you an idea for your budgeting purposes. Home staging will cost less than a price reduction. If you have to lower the price of your home, it will normally be $10,000 or more. Home staging costs significantly less than a price reduction. By reducing the price, that is less money in your pocket as the homeowner. Home staging helps increase the perceived value of the home which then translates to a higher offer price on your home.
#4 Home staging is only for expensive houses
Not true. I’ve staged houses that ranged from $100,000 to over $1 million. Every house can do with some sort of staging. Now not every home will need all the same changes but the changes will be enough to make a difference in the overall appearance. I would not add expensive couches in a $100,000 home but there are things you can do to help make it more appealing to buyers.
What home staging is not
- Home staging is not meant to hide serious flaws
- Home staging is not just decluttering or depersonalizing
- It’s not just adding a few fancy pillows
- Home staging is not setting a dining room table.
So what is home staging?
What is Home Staging: Tips to Get Started
I like how my mentor, Debra Gould The Staging Diva, explained how people pick homes. She says, “house hunting is like speed dating” where you need to create a great first impression of your home. You see so many houses in a day and you pick the ones that you love. I want to take a bit further and say that your house is going out on a date.
When you get ready to meet someone for the first time, you get ready by taking a shower, pick out a nice outfit, put on your makeup and do your hair. Do you remember taking the time to do that? The same attention to detail needs to happen to your house.
Which is why as a home stager, we start with decluttering because it’s the foundation we need to get to first.
Decluttering
“Clutter is no more than postponed decisions” Barbara Hemphill
One of the most common home improvements that real estate agents recommend to homeowners is to declutter the home. Photos will be taken of your home and posted online so you want to make a great impression. Don’t show the pile of laundry in the bedroom or the stack of toys in the playroom. Clutter just makes the room feel smaller and you want buyers to feel like the room is bigger. Most people think that just decluttering is enough to “stage a home” but there are more steps.
Cleaning
Once you removed the clutter, you will most likely find that you need to clean behind whatever is left in the room. Cleaning may also lead to painting walls because you may have found some scuffs. This is all part of making your home look presentable. Remember you are trying to make a great first impression. So far these two steps should be common things you should do to get your house ready to sell.
Fix things around the home
If you have burned out lights, broken doors or damaged walls, these are things you need to fix before you put your home up for sale. I had three contractors in my house to put in new recessed lighting in a master closet, a carpenter to finish some show molding we never got a chance to finish in a living room and a tile guy to change out the countertops in our master bathroom. These took some time to schedule so be aware of how soon you need to get your house on the market and get the work done.
Rearranging furniture
If you’ve removed some clutter, you may have realized that the furniture doesn’t work in the room anymore. Or maybe the room still looks too small. By rearranging the furniture, you can make the room look better and larger! This is where hiring a home stager can help you because they know the best way to set up a room. You don’t know the number of times I’ve heard people say, “now why didn’t I think of that?” after I moved a few furniture pieces around. It’s because you live in your home day in and day out and you don’t see it anymore. As a home stager, you get a fresh set of eyes looking at your home.
Some homeowners may not want to deal with using their furniture to stage a house. If you want to get rental furniture you can but know that there can be a minimum cost per month and sometimes companies require a 2 month minimum to rent out the furniture pieces even if you sell your home in less than 2 months. Most homeowners have all the furniture they need in the home but sometimes you need a piece or two. In one home staging project, the owners did not have a dinette set for the eat in kitchen, so we rented out that small set to show off the space.
Final home staging touches
The final touches in staging will include staging small areas like a fireplace mantel or a coffee table. Adding pillows in the best colors on the bed or the couch. These are accessories that help complete the picture. You don’t want to go overboard because then we go back into the “clutter” territory.
If you do all these steps in the home staging process, you now know the answer to “what is home staging?” Home staging encompasses all these steps to make the home look presentable and inviting to homeowners. Think about the homes you walked through when looking for a home. Did it look homey and inviting or small and dark?
I hope this gives you a better idea of what home staging really is, what it is not, bust some home staging myths and then give you an actual breakdown of the home staging process. But if you feel overwhelmed or need some help staging your home, feel free to contact me via email. My home staging consultations are normally online so you if you need help staging your home, schedule an online consult today!