The behind-the-scenes work in preparing you for showings can be the end all be all of your home-selling process. Staging your home helps create an inviting atmosphere for listing photos, videos, and showings allowing potential customers to imagine their own lives there.

Avoiding these few mistakes can help show your home’s entire potential and create endless possibilities for those interested in the property. 

Blocking Traffic Flow

You want your home to feel inviting so making sure it looks and feels spacious is a must when staging it. To do this keep the home’s traffic patterns in mind, and make sure there is no furniture blocking these patterns.

Making a room difficult to enter is uninviting and lacks an overall aesthetic. Also, be sure to avoid placing pieces of furniture in front of windows or any other sources of natural lighting coming into the room. 

Forgetting to Stage Closets

Just like the atmosphere of the home storage can serve as an essential selling point as well. Closets and pantries are just as important as the rest of the home and should be well-organized and uncrowded.

Try to make closets look as roomy as possible by having clothes hung up with matching hangers, shoes on racks, and even repainting the inside of the closet walls.

For pantries, neatly stack plates and have different types of dishes separated and organized. 

“Naked” Rooms

Opening up your home doesn’t necessarily mean stripping it. Rooms or spaces that lack accessories or detail can create an uninviting and unsettling environment.

Leave your accessories visible or add some decor to bring life back into your home. Adding a centerpiece to your coffee table, some rustic-styled books, paintings, or even some mood lighting, (such as lamps, candles, or turning on the fireplace) can help create a cozy and “homey” vibe for potential clients to imagine themselves in. 

Gender-Specific Decorating

The idea of listing photos, videos, and showings is to allow individuals to picture themselves, their families, and their lives in a home. Avoiding gender-specific rooms or decor allows individuals to imagine each room in a way that would benefit their family. Using more gender-neutral decor and room themes allows them to be more likely to see the rooms as something that would work in their own lives. 

Overlooking Views 

Even if you think your home doesn’t have a “pretty view,” there are still ways to incorporate a main focus point into your room setups. Position furniture to face a window, fireplace, an interesting piece of artwork, or aesthetic bookshelf, especially if those rooms don’t have a TV as the main focal point of the room. 

Forgetting an Interior Designer

At HomeGrown, our interior designer walks through every listed home to ensure that all the five steps above have been considered and that the home is ready for showings, listing pictures, or video work. Incorporating an interior designer helps add that reassurance during the home-selling process and preps your home for the most important steps. 

Having your home in tip-top shape for showings is crucial to your home-selling journey. Making your home a place where individuals for families can picture themselves in is what makes a house come off more as their new home.

For more tips on selling your home, download the HomeGrown Realty Sellers Guide, Staging Checklist, or request a custom market analysis for a Home Valuation. Happy selling!