When staging your home for sale, there are five golden rules to take into consideration as you work your way through each room of your house.

Five Golden Rules:

De-Personalised

The buyer needs to picture themselves in the house – not you. That wedding photo may mean the world to you, but the buyer it’s a distraction that prevents them from seeing a home for their family.

Maximise

Declutter and maximise the space in your home. Closets packed tight with all your clothes make a place like it lacks closet space. Consider temporarily storing the overflow offsite.

Sanitize

This golden rule is the easiest and cheapest way to stage your home – clean it. A sink full of dirty dishes is as unappealing to you as it would be to the buyer. It is well worth the elbow grease in cleaning floors, walls, baseboards, ceiling fans and windows.

Modernise

Unless your home has exceptional period built-ins, all home could benefit from some updating. If someone feels the house is dated, they will reflect that feeling in a lower offer. Consider a few simple changes like swapping out expensive fixtures for nickel or chrome.

Neutralise

Colour can make or break a buyer’s interest in your home. You may love that shocking red wall, but all the potential buyer sees is a great deal of painting in their future because of red clashes with their style. The picture is one of the most inexpensive ways to change a look of a home.

Bonus Tips

Closets

Clear closets of unnecessary clutter, and organise to maximise the amount of open storage space you are showing off to potential buyers. Use boxes stacked together to keep up and hide the clutter.

Use matching hangers for clothes – hooks are inexpensive so splurging on higher quality are inexpensive, so celebrating on higher quality hangers to replace free wire hangers from the dry cleaners will modernise your closets with visual impact and a more luxurious feel.

Bedrooms

A quick and inexpensive way to improve the appeal of your bedroom is to use gender-neutral colours when touching up paint jobs and re-accessorizing to have the broadest possible appeal. Colour coordinate where possible bedspreads, walls, curtains etc. should have a clear theme to their colours if possible.

Bathrooms

If walls are grimy, spray them using a standard spray bottle filled with a mixture of one part bleach and one part water, follow up with a fresh coat of paint.

Clear countertops of everything but the essential to make space look more open and more extensive.

Kitchen

Modernize your dated cabinets; they can be touched up for less than $200 with a coat of new wood stain and or even a good sanding a coat of paint. Replacing brass or wooden cabinet hardware with brushed silver or stainless steel is an effective way of updating dated cabinets as well.

Clean the house as clean as you can. Cleaning the house doesn’t mean you only have to sweep or vacuum the floor or run the mop. To make it as clean as possible means you have to go beyond the usual tasks. If you need to shampoo the carpets, then do it. If you need to move huge furniture and appliances, you have to. Professional cleaners who go beyond the ordinary cleaning ways can help you in the cleanliness tasks.
Infuse the house with aroma of real fruits, specifically citrus. According to a study in which several homes were infused with scents of real foods, that which had the scent of real citrus was highly favored by potential home buyers. The scent was chosen over baked goodies and chicken. One precaution though is to avoid the use of chemical-based citrus such as air fresheners. It may create the notion that something is being covered up because the air is chemically infused.
Lit up few aromatic candles. Give your house the warmth and comforting scent of aromatic candles. They never fail to relax the mind and soothe the senses. They also send message to potential buyers how relaxing a stay in the house can be.
Invoke neutral scents of cleanliness. While some buyers will go for scents, some will just opt for the simple smell of cleanliness. Aligned with the first tip, the use of baking soda and other non-scent products will give off the image of simplicity. This is in contrast with the complex scent that potpourri and fresheners emit.

Scents condition the brain and affects the mood of people. Imagine how your potential buyers would be turned off when there is bad smell circulating inside the house that you are selling. Imagine how they will be tempted to give you offers if your house is appealing, inviting, and nice-smelling.