Your checklist for staging a home.
You’re walking through a home for the first time. What are your first thoughts? What is your first impression? What do you smell? How does it make you feel?
Now, picture yourself living there? Where will you sit? Where would you hang your pictures? Place your furniture?
This is exactly the process your visitors will go through when they come to view your home. So, put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and make sure their first impression is a great one!
To help, we’ve compiled a home staging checklist that we at ClickaSkip agree, contains all the essentials to creating that great first impression, and categorised them to hit all the senses:
Vision
- Don’t scare people away by the time they’re at the front door. “No junk mail” signs, visible old letters, broken letterboxes and doorknobs, and chipped woodwork can be enough to turn people away.
- Clear away all clutter. Ensure shoes are tidied, coats are hanging, no clothes or towels are hanging on chairs or the bannister. Check that all toys are tidied away, books are displayed neatly and all countertops are clear, displaying the bare minimum, if even.
- Make sure the house is sparkling clean! But also lived in! In other words, you don’t want it to look too staged or like a show house, but you do want it to look like it is professionally cleaned often.
- Change any dark or bright walls! At a minimum, ensure walls are a neutral colour. This old trick has been proven time and time again, to get more offers.
- Try to keep the master bedroom gender-neutral. It makes it easier for people to imagine changing and putting their own mark on. Think blank canvas!
- Open the wardrobes, and leave 30% empty space.
- If the house is small, or limited in light, use mirrors to create the illusion that the property is bigger.
- Do not replace old carpets! Buyers are constantly being reminded to question new carpets.
- Give spare rooms a purpose. Stage a desk or spare bed so visitors can envisage a use for the room.
- Clean the garden. At a very minimum, dispose of any animal excrement and rubbish.
- Remove brambles, weeds, mow the lawns, trim hedges.
- Ensure any garages or sheds are tidy and hire a skip to clear away rubbish.
- Stage a lifestyle outside too, so viewers can imagine themselves living there. Set up the garden table and chairs, add fairy lights, candles and freshly plant some shrubs or flowers.
- Power wash any concrete areas such as paths, driveways and patios.
Smell and Taste
- Open the windows and let the house breathe, but not so much that it affects the temperature of your home, as you don’t want them to feel too hot or too cold.
- Create an aroma. Nothing beats the smell of freshly baked bread or fresh cut flowers, so get baking and display an arrangement of flowers. Another old trick and a favourite of ours, is the smell of freshly ground coffee beans.
- Do not overpower the house with unnatural aromas such as air fresheners, perfume, candles and cleaning products as they might cause suspicion that something smelling nasty is being covered up.
Touch
- Ensure the doorbell works. The moment the finger touches that button, the first impression to the inside begins.
- Make sure the entire inside of your property is dust free. One spot of dust is enough to put a potential buyer off.
Sound
- Again, ensure that doorbell or door knocker works!
- Present a peaceful neighbourhood. Does your neighbour’s dog have a loud bark or is your neighbour undergoing building works? If so, perhaps you can arrange a viewing when that dog is out and your street is at its quietest.
Finally, look at everything again through your visitor’s eyes. Did you miss something? If so fix it, and keep on looking through those eyes until you see that perfect would-be home.