March 2022 Staging Tip of the Month

I often recommend removing wall shelves when selling because not every buyer’s furniture layouts will work with existing locations of shelves.  But if you don’t have time to patch and paint the holes, it’s important to make the shelves look good.  In these two examples, we added art in the gaps the shelves created and made sure they were well accessorized.

February 2022 Staging Tip of the Month

The underlying key to staging is “balance”, but that is a very hard thing to get without years of practice.  I thought I would share a couple rooms and show how we balanced them.  Every room is different, so there are no set rules.  But this might give you an idea of how to look at your rooms a little differently.

In this first set of photos, you’ll see a plant and chair on each side of the fireplace which is making that side of the room very busy (and therefore too heavy).  Off to the right you see a big blank wall which is too light.  For staging, we removed one of the plants to open up the fireplace, added a large piece of art to the wall and then shifted the lamp to the other side of the buffet to move some weight to that side of the room.  A few light pillows to the sofa and light accessories to the buffet lightened up those areas of the room.
This one is a little easier to explain as it’s quite obvious that the right side of the room was much heavier than the left.  We balanced it out by adding a dark chair to the left for weight and sticks and art for height.  To lighten the right side, we added a lamp and light pillows.
This room was too heavy on the bottom.  A very easy fix was adding light throw pillows to make the sofa lighter and adding art to bring the eye up.

January 2022 Staging Tip of the Month

So many of us make new year’s resolutions to exercise more and that some times means we end up with a treadmill or Pelaton in the living room.  That’s great for keeping you on track, but for selling, it’s better to move the equipment to a dedicated exercise room or corner of the lower level family room.  In this room, we added a rug from their basement and then brought in a chair for staging.

December 2021 Staging Tip of the Month

As the winter sun gets weaker, it’s common for people to put all their plants in the window with the most light.  For staging, it’s important to spread those plants out around the home.  A little bit of green in every room brings life to your whole house.  And if those plants can’t live away from that sunny window, just keep them staged for the photos and first few days of showings.  In this example, we moved the homeowners plants to each room of the home and add a bit of staging furniture to make this first-impression room shine.

November 2021 Staging Tip of the Month

So many people are working from home now, that it has become necessary to show an office space or two in every home we prepare for sale.  You don’t have to have a dedicated office space either.  Spaces in your home that may have otherwise been wasted are great places to tuck a desk.  This oversized entry is the perfect example: