4 Secrets to Home Staging

Are you looking to put your house on the market? Summer is quickly approaching and now is the time to start preparing your home for show. Like most families, your home has probably been lived in for many years and may need a few minor adjustments. There are ways that can increase the profit and turnaround time with some insightful creativity and a little elbow grease. Below are four tips to help increase the chances of a fast and profitable sale!

Curb Appeal

Have you ever heard the quote, “first impressions last a lifetime?” That is most certainly true in the sale of a home. Your buyer’s first impression is marked from the moment they pull into the driveway. The first impression you want the buyer to have is that your home is just as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. Power washing the roof, gutters and patio tell the story that this house is well maintained. It’s also amazing how a fresh coat of paint can give a house a great facelift, and an opportunity to update the colours to the newest trends. Plant some simple flowerbeds in the front with shrubs and greenery, but not too much as to appear high maintenance.

Clutter Free and Clean

Hiring an agent or asking an honest friend is a great way of having an objective approach to taking the clutter out of your house. For instance, if you live in Louisville, consider pricing out some local storage units to store any access furniture or unused outdoor equipment to make your space is clutter free. Have the agent or friend go from room to room pointing out any unnecessary items that would allow the buyer to imagine they can live in your home. For example, this may entail taking down all pictures and items that personalizes the home with your family.

Room Transformations

Every home is different and therefore requires unique adjustments. Doing major room transformations in the living area, bathroom and kitchen are eye catchers in a home.  Replace old dingy carpet and linoleum with updated ceramic tile or carpet, or put a fresh coat of neutral toned paint in the rooms to give the house an updated look. It is important when picking out colors to ensure they all flow together throughout the entire home. Don’t be afraid to use darker colours in the powder room or accent walls to bring a trendy hint to the home. Replacing hardware on cabinet doors and updating a light fixture are inexpensive changes that go a long way.

Making Bigger Rooms

After cleaning, painting and updating features of the home, it is very important to stage each room to give an appearance that your rooms are airy and spacious. Lighting can contribute to how spacious a room feels. Choose window coverings that allow sunlight to come in because dark rooms come across as small rooms. Overhead, under cabinet, and table or wall lighting are three different types of lighting that add extra light to a room. It is important to arrange each room’s furniture to create symmetry, flow and lots of space. Pay attention to the size of your furniture. A smaller dining room table will make the room appear much larger.  If this is the case, consider putting the existing dining table in storage and purchasing an inexpensive table that is much smaller to give a roomier illusion.

Spending a little extra money to make small adjustments through the home can add a considerable addition to the final sale price. By taking some time to update and freshen up your home, your efforts will pay off with a great new beginning for the next chapter in your life!

Decorating safety tips

Decorating is equal parts exciting and stressful. There are so many things to do, changes to make, items to throw out. In changing your home around though, there are certain safety hazards which will crop up as you go along. Make sure you have made note of all of the potential risks before you go about the decoration process.

Putting stuff away

Your bits and bobs and furniture get moved around a lot during the decorating process, and because they are in unusual places the chances of tripping over them and injuring yourself are high. To avoid needing to call on your aviva.ie insurance, make sure you clear the area you’re working in, to limit the risk of accident.

Fire hazards

You might think you’ve got all the potential fire hazards covered, but you’d be amazed how many can occur during the process of redecoration. Putting a cardboard box too close to the toaster or cooker, leaving candles too close to the drapes, detatching the smoke detector while you clean out the fire place and paint the ceiling. Be prepared and keep an eye out for any accidental hazards as you go along.

Use the right tools

Make sure you are using the right tools for the job at hand. It’s not clever to try and put a picture up on the wall without a ladder to elevate you to the correct height. Also you should wear shoes while you are moving furniture around, clearing the garage or using tools, because they can protect your feet if you drop something. Use your common sense.

Get some help

It never hurts to have a helping hand from a family member or a friend when you’re decorating. They can hold the ladder while you’re painting the ceiling, help you put the new bed together, or assist in moving the couch away from the wall. Extra people reduces the chances you’ll get hurt.

Aesthetics Can Be Sustainable Too

When you think about making your home more environmentally friendly, what do you think of? You probably think about things like solar panel installation, bamboo or cork flooring, energy star appliances, turning off the lights when you leave a room, etc.

If you live in the US and within a state that has deregulated its energy industry (it operates like our privatized industry–the choice of provider is up to the consumer), like Connecticut, Ohio or Texas, you can shop around for great rates and opt in to the sustainable energy programs that you can find by researching different Texas electricity companies (or whatever part of the country that is relevant to your residence). Have you given any thought to your decorations? Whether you are US or UK based, decorations play a large role in the “greenness” of your home.

Let’s start with the paint. Make sure that the paint you use for both the inside and outside of your home is low VOC paint. VOC stands for volatile organic compounds. These are pollutants that are held within the paint while the paint is still liquid but that are able to release themselves from the paint after it has been applied to a surface and dried. In the UK, interior matt paint can only contain up to 30 g/l and glossy paint can only contain up to 100 g/ls of VOCs. Low VOC paint is healthier for you and for the planet.

Use Recessed LED lighting and LED bulbs in your lamps. You obviously know that compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) use less energy than incandescent. LED lights use even less energy than CFLs. They also lend themselves better to decorating and design because their own designs are flexible. You can get LED lights in different bulb shapes, colors, etc. CFLs need to be one shape and type but LED offers you energy efficient and money saving variety.

Use plants as decorations. Plants are a fantastic way to keep the air in your home scrubbed clean without having to buy an electricity-powered air purifier or humidifier. To be even more eco-friendly, decorate using plants that are native to your area. If you take care of your plants properly, they can keep your house looking and feeling great for many years.

Go with hardwood floors instead of carpeting. Cork flooring is the most environmentally friendly wood that you can use. What’s more, using this type of flooring supports local industry as the Cork is harvested here in the UK. Bamboo is another fantastic choice for floors because bamboo is not actually a tree but a grass, so you don’t have to worry about increasing deforestation to make your home pretty. Carpeting keeps dust and can’t be recycled, the padding and carpeting simply get tossed out after you use them. Wooden (or grass, where bamboo is concerned) flooring can be repurposed.

Use hemp fabric for your curtains, table cloths, etc. Hemp is strong enough to be grown without pesticides, which means less poisons leeching into the ground. When you think of hemp you probably think of dreadlocks and people who forget to bathe but it’s useful for all sorts of things. Hemp curtains and tablecloths feel, look, and behaves like fine linens.

Shop at thrift and second hand stores and yard sales for your less important furniture. You don’t want to buy a bed here, but you can buy chairs, tables, bookcases, kitchenware, etc. Thrifted and second hand furniture and décor is very chic right now. Even better, it lends itself nicely to DIY refinishing projects, which is a great creative outlet for you.

These are just some of the ways that you can decorate in the most environmentally friendly way possible. How many others can you think up?