Stage Your Chicago Home for Sale - reviews and guide
Article by Spencer Mason
Stage Your Chicago Home for Sale - Real Estate - Selling
If you're thinking about putting your home in Chicago on the market you've probably heard about staging. It's a common "first step" for home sellers and is highly recommended as a way to prepare your Chicago home for sale. Whether or not you're an HGTV fan who watches every home makeover show there is, you can employ basic staging techniques to significantly improve your home's curb appeal and selling points without spending a lot of money or hiring a professional designer. Since we already mentioned HGTV, let's check out what the network suggests with its "15 Secrets of Home Staging"
#1 Eliminate Clutter - Professional stagers generally take out half of the homeowner's furnishings to make the home feel bigger and more spacious. So, box up that extra stuff and put it in storage while your home is on the market.
#2 Group Furniture - Move furniture away from the walls to create a sense of space and position pieces in intimate groups, such as a sofa, chair and coffee table set in the living room.
#3 Play Musical Chairs - Literally. Furniture, accessories and artwork are not tied to any one room. Feel free to move pieces from one room to another for the best look.
#4 Give Rooms a Purpose - Every room in your house should have a designated role in order to show the value of the space to potential buyers. For example, throw oversized pillows and a couple mats on the floor of the basement to create a yoga studio. An armchair and reading lamp can turn any hard-to-use space into a study nook.
#5 Light It Up - There should be three types of lighting in every room: overhead ambient lighting, accent wall sconces or table lamps, and task lighting such as under-cabinet illumination. Total wattage should be about 100 watts per 50 square feet.
#6 Use Color to Enhance Size - Small rooms will appear bigger when they are painted the same color as an adjacent room. It also helps to make the curtains the same color as the walls.
#7 Paint Neutral - Stay away from bold wall color in the main rooms as it tends to shrink the number of offers made on a home for sale. Instead, paint the walls with lighter hues of any shade you like (it doesn't have to be beige!).
#8 Be Bold in Bathrooms - Using darker colors in the bathroom, dining room and bedroom can have a nice, dramatic touch. Start with painting just one wall, it may be enough to add flair and won't make the space seem smaller.
#9 Vary Wall Hangings - Veer away from hanging every piece of art at the same height, in the same place on every wall in your house. Break up the monotony with different groupings, patterns and arrangements.
#10 Rule of Three - It's best to place decorative objects in clusters of three (or other odd-number groups). Position them in a triangle-shaped bunch, as opposed to all in a row. Vary the height and width of the objects, with the largest/tallest piece in the back.
#11 Bring Outdoors In - Fresh flowers are a great touch, but you don't need to spend a fortune on weekly bouquets from the florist. Just step outside and clip budding tree limbs in the spring or sprigs of evergreen in the winter.
#12 Give the Bedroom a Boost - Make your bed a luxurious focal point. A double air mattress on a simple frame is a cheap staging trick that gives the bed height. Use a fancy sheet instead of a new duvet for an inexpensive facelift. Add throw pillows with color contrast to draw the eye.
#13 Kitchen Makeover - Replace old cabinet doors or paint the ones you have to give the kitchen a new look. Switch out tired hardware with sleek new versions. Contact the manufacturers of your appliances to see if there are face plates you can purchase to update the look of your dishwasher and refrigerator.
#14 Finish Fix-it Jobs - It costs less for you to complete small repairs around the house than what a potential buyer will ask for in concessions to get the job done by a professional.
#15 Polish and Shine - Bathrooms are a big selling point of homes so it may be a good return on investment to upgrade the fixtures, put in new tiling and give the room a relaxing ambiance with spa-like accessories.
Spencer Mason writes about Chicago condos for sale.
Use and distribution of this article is subject to our Publisher Guidelines
whereby the original author's information and copyright must be included.
Spencer Mason
RSS Feed
Report Article
Publish Article
Post a Comment