Styling to Sell

Property styling is a very important tool & is a fast growing industry allowing people to make their homes look spectacular, fresh & contemporary – for a profit.

But does it work?

Honestly, yes.

When you walk into an older home, filled with older furniture, the whole space feels dated & unappealing. Whereas when you walk into an older home with fresh styling, it looks liveable & bright.

So where do you start?

This is taking out all the old stuff. This can be a hard process as some of these items have always been in the room, from your perspective, so it almost feels wrong to move them. But remember, a buyer won’t have those items in the room.

You need to think from a buyer’s point of view. What would you like to see?

The answer is usually a clean, open & fresh space. One where you can see what can fit in the room without being cluttered. This means you keep a bed in the bedroom, with one small side table but perhaps not the dresser, the freestanding wardrobe, the armchair & all the other items you have. They just need to see that a ‘double or queen sized’ bed fits in that room.

The lounge room needs a sofa or two, with small side tables. Don’t fill the room too much with furniture as the artwork & décor will take centre stage.

Decorating is a large part of our contemporary design. This is a useful tool for staging as you can grab loads of fashionable pieces at quite a bargain price. Shops like Kmart, Target & Big W are jumping on the décor trend & keeping the prices low.

When choosing décor items, keep a theme. This may be a similar colour palette, such as powder pinks with blonde timber, or a theme with patterns, like geometric shapes. This will make the random pieces you pick part of a cohesive set while still being individually interesting.

Make sure you have soft items as well as harder pieces. Throws & cushions are a great softness for chairs & beds, with lamps & vases being the harder pieces. Rugs are a great way to define spaces, which is helpful in separating larger rooms into décor nooks. And make sure you add lamps, as this helps significantly with the photographing process to give more interest.

If possible, choose lighter or brighter colours. Older homes tend to be darker or have bad lighting. This is where the new, fresh pieces look lively & breathe a new life into the old house.

Décor is movable, so if something doesn’t fit or work in one room it can be moved to another quickly.

Styling will make a huge difference to the feeling of the house, & the best part is – you can keep all this for your home after the sale!

It can bring thousands more dollars at the sale & can make your home look much more inviting for the open-house. And, since it is an easy & cost effective way to jazz up an interior, it is the perfect time to jump on the ‘décor’ bandwagon!

But what if you aren’t selling your home? What if it isn’t the décor, but the house itself which is the problem? How do you fix a flaw in the layout of a room with simple measures?

See my blog – Renovating For Sale –http://www.mystereedesigns.com.au/renovating-for-sale/