The Value of Home Staging and Interior Design-Karen Wells

Buying a home is emotional. Buyers are looking for a space that makes them feel comfortable when they walk in and where they can see themselves living. When selling a home, we want to help you create that space so your home is highly marketable and sells for top dollar. This is why we offer free consultations with our trusted friend, Karen Wells. She is the owner of A&B Wallcoverings and Interiors and has been working with us for years to make seller’s homes shine! She gave us her advice for home staging and some of her tips she uses when designing a space in this interview. 

Exterior Spaces

The exterior area of your home is the first impression! Whether someone is driving by or it’s at a showing, the outside is what everyone sees first! What can you do to make the exterior really stand out? Keep it clean and maintained! Remove any trash, debris, cobwebs, and make the area look clean and well-kept. This can include keeping the lawn trimmed, spreading mulch, weeding, and sweeping porches. To really make your home exterior shine, a power wash will do wonders and will make your home look like new! 

Interior Spaces

This is where you live and you see this everyday! It can become a place that feels comfortable to you, but may not be a comfortable space for someone else. How can you take your space to that level for someone else? 

1. Declutter: You don’t realize how much stuff you have accumulated over the years until you have to move! Take time to go through and figure out what needs to stay with you, what is trash, and what can be donated. Once you have done that, put stuff back in a way that it isn’t all over countertops or other surfaces. Creating a clear surface allows the buyer to see the home and envision their stuff there. 
2. Clean: As Karen says, “Clean houses sell way better than dirty houses.” A clean house gives the seller a sense of a cared for home and of orderliness. You can clean it yourself or hire someone to help you out, but make sure you pay attention to areas you may not normally clean, because a buyer will notice! 
3. Organize: The areas that you think are tucked away and no one will see, are just as important as the rest of your main living area. Closets, storage spaces, garages, and sheds are all areas that will be seen by buyers! Make these spaces appealing too! Like cleaning, organizing adds another layer of trust for the buyer when they go through your home, and in normal day-to-day life might make your life more enjoyable too!
4. Take Care of the Little Things: Small maintenance items like caulking, changing light bulbs, and patching holes, might not seem that important, but they make a huge difference when they aren’t done. You don’t want buyers to have little things to nitpick. So by doing these small things, buyers will sense that the home is maintained and that you are trustworthy! All great things for a buyer to feel as they are going through a home!  

These are just some of the things we go over when doing a home staging consultation! The list that you get might seem daunting, but if you do 95% of the work, it will pay off in gorgeous photos and video, excited buyers, and potentially higher offers. If you aren’t quite ready to sell, but want to know what you can do to improve your home, contact us for a free, no obligation consultation.