Home Staging Prepare Your House For Sale

Natural Lighting

Take stock of how much light is entering your house. When your house is dark, it feels like a bat cave and it won’t matter even if you have the most incredible interior.

Open all curtains and windows while it’s bright outside. Now observe minutely each room. Does it feel dark and cold? It may be fine if you’re used to living this way but buyers will be quick to cross your house off their list for lack of coziness.

Natural Light:

  • Remove ornaments or anything hanging on your windows. The glass panes must be clear and unobstructed.
  • Cut back tree limbs that block natural light reaching your windows. Similarly, remove indoor shelves and plants blocking your windows.
  • Window treatments: replace dark or heavy looking drapes. Here the sky is the limit:
      Consider shutters, sheer white panels, or cut-to-measure blinds at a home center. They are relatively inexpensive and you can revitalize your rooms in one weekend
      Mount your valance higher to let in more light while making the window appear larger.
      Yet another possibility is to leave windows bare for a fresh, on-trend look.
  • Remove doors and let adjacent rooms share their light (and fresh air). This works well with dining and living rooms.
  • Reflect light with strategically placed mirrors. Do this sparingly or risk being labeled as the house of mirrors.
  • Replace the solid door of your study room with a French door so light can permeate to the rest of the house. To upgrade inexpensively, buy a French glass insert and install it yourself.
  • Clean your windows and skylights. Layers of grime can filter out an amazing amount of light.
  • Consider a new decorative glass insert for your main door. Glass inserts are economical and easy to install. You’re guaranteed to buy lots of light for your foyer.

When natural light isn’t enough, you’ll need to accent it: (more...)

More tips from 'Prepare Your House For Sale'

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Box infrequently used items: clothes, shoes, books, CDs and DVDs, cookware, small appliances, etc. Clear out all the stuff from your linen closet, kitchen cupboards and cabinets but for the essentials for day-to-day survival. You need to learn to live on bare necessities while selling your house.
Do not conceal problem areas in your house. This is unethical! Home buyers are savvy and if they see through your tactic you can be assured any potential deal is dead. Even if you manage to get past the buyer, it’s not likely you can fool their home inspector. The money spent fixing and upgrading will hopefully increase the value of your home to offset the repair costs.
You have probably grown so used to the smell of your house that you fail to notice that there are strong tobacco smoke, pet, mildew and cooking odours that will offend your buyers. Buyers are most suspicious of houses that have smells because they are afraid they might not be able to get rid of them. Ask a friend or a relative to do a sniff test of your house. The best smell is no smell.
Bathrooms: store toiletries in a wicker basket. Besides being clean and elegant you can quickly whisk it away just before a showing.
Mistake #10: Not paying attention to your house’s curb appeal. You’ve been living inside the box. Go outside and observe your house critically. When the exterior paint is peeling or the yard is left unkempt your buyers will develop a bad after-taste. Once you’ve made a bad impression, it’s hard to recover.
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