Home Staging Tips for Packing Away Your Emotions
Home Staging Tips for Packing Away Your Emotions While Styling Your Space
One of the most crucial aspects in the home staging process is depersonalizing your space. It’s all about neutralizing, or erasing, your own taste from your home’s design so that potential buyers can imagine themselves living there. 
Some people struggle with this, even though they are hoping to leave the home behind very soon. However, part of successful property styling has to be packing away your emotions as well as your stuff.
It could seem cruel to be told by a real estate agent, that now the “personal stamp” you’ve lovingly made on your home must be removed, but remember that you’re selling your home, not your stuff. What you love, someone else might hate, and even though decor can be changed, the strong negative emotions that not being impressed with a home’s decor style can make can be very hard for buyers to get past. Most of them are looking for a home that is basically move-in ready, not one they will have to spend time repainting or altering to remove the traces of the last owner (ie: you).
Top Tips for ‘Emotionless’ Home Staging
Declutter and Subtract
Taking the time to declutter your home for sale is a must, as any property stylist will tell you right away. Don’t make the mistake of believing that customers will notice the beauty beneath the beast; they will not. Furthermore, they may think you’re concealing something if your home looks dirty, untidy or neglected. Make sure everything is decluttered and clean before staging your home.
A common home styling mistake is overcrowding a room with too much furniture, which can “shrink” any area. Remove all the furniture, then replace around 1/3 to 1/2 of it, at most. Store the rest until it is time for you to move.
Your goal in doing this is to arrange furniture to complement a room’s architectural elements while creating the illusion of space when you are preparing your home for sale. Using the services of a professional property stylist will help your home sell for more and quicker.
Axe Excess Artwork and Accessories
When it comes to decorating your home, you usually go with your own particular style and preference. Your personality should not take center stage while preparing your home for sale via home staging. Don’t get offended if someone doesn’t like your taste, even if it’s fantastic.
When depersonalizing your space, keep in mind that some artwork and signs may offend others. Such things include
- Nudes
- Religious imagery
- Sports team logos
- Anything that conveys a political statement.
These are the kinds of things you’ll want to bring with you to your new house but put away while selling your home. This will prevent you from accidentally turning off sensitive buyers. You should also remove any and all personal photos, as buyers need to be able to envision their own family making memories in the home, not yours.
Artwork and decorative artifacts for the home should complement your home’s furniture and architecture, bind a room together, and bring life to the space. You should leave a few carefully chosen pieces out so that the place does not look too bare, but make them neutral and inoffensive pieces, like landscapes or still life images of flowers.
Avoid the common mistake of hanging pictures on every single wall, as this might give the impression of a closed space. Allow for some “breathing room.”
Get Personal Items Out of Sight
- Depersonalizing your home by removing personal belongings will help you sell it faster.
- Melting soap, wet towels, hair in the drain, and dirty clothes were the most common buyer turnoffs, according to some real estate studies.
- Shampoo, makeup, toothbrushes, prescriptions, a bathrobe hung on the bathroom door, children’s toys, filthy dishes, soiled clothing, and other items should all be hidden.
- Personal goods should be stored in baskets and ornamental boxes with lids. When buyers are on their way, and you need to hastily store personal stuff, shallow plastic bins with lids for under bed storage come in handy too.
Australian Property Stylist Directory
If you would like to get a Property Stylist to chat with you about how they can style a house for sale, then take a look at the comprehensive Directory of the Stylists nearest you.
