Small Details Most Sellers Overlook When Selling A House

Home staging is all about making your home appealing to buyers, and it’s all in the details. Sure, you may know how to make the beds, clean out the clutter and plot around some floral arrangements, but is that really enough? In this post, we’ll address some small details that are ever so commonly overlooked when home staging Wellington wide, because once you’re aware of these little things, you’ll surely notice the difference they can make.

The Deepest of Cleaning

Everyone (hopefully) knows that to sell a house it’s got to be clean, but just how clean should it really be? The only acceptable answer here is your house should literally be the cleanest it has ever been. Not only will you have to spring clean to get rid of clutter and dust away all the cobwebs, but for an effective staged home you’ll need to summer, autumn and winter clean it as well. Hygiene is extremely important when buying a home, and buyers want the home they choose to live in to be as good as new. This means getting the dirt out of every nook and cranny – window frames, skirting boards and drawer and door handles are good places to start. This is a deep cleaning situation, so if you aren’t an absolute perfectionist, we would suggest hiring a professional cleaning service for this one as every speck of dust makes a difference to your buyers.

A Colour Palette That Pops

Once your house is squeaky clean, you’ve got to think very carefully about each detail that goes into all the rooms. Channel your inner interior designer (or don’t hesitate to ask a more creatively inclined friend for help) and carefully consider the colour palettes of each room. You want to keep most things in the room fairly neutral and use lighter tones, as these tones will make the rooms look bigger and more appealing. It’s important to add some colour but to do so sparingly – you don’t want to overcrowd the space.

An easy way to do this is to pick a spot colour for each room and stick to 2 or 3 items of that colour to make the room pop. It could be a bedspread, a vase and some flowers that are all blue in the master bedroom, or a painting and a matching pink throw in the lounge. As long as the rest of the rooms are nice neutral tones that complement each other well, this should look really effective. If done wrong, too much colour can make a room look smaller or cluttered and this isn’t good for a buyers first impression.

Sensory Details

If you think you’re done when your home is looking all nice and clean with a pop of colour, you’re almost there – but not quite. People have five senses and they’re all equally important to check off when staging your home. This means making sure there are pleasant sights, sounds and smells, as well as surfaces people touch and even tastes. This checklist, when ticked properly, can really push your house to the top tier of home staging on the market. This is great for buyers because they’ll have a lasting memory of your home over others.

There are some really easy ways to make sure all five senses are taken care of. Making everything look good for sight as detailed in the last two steps should be ticked off by now. You could think about playing some gentle music during open homes – something like smooth jazz can really make potential buyers feel relaxed and at home, be careful that it isn’t too heavy or too loud and double check you don’t have your music app on shuffle because that can cause a stir!

Nice smells make so much of a difference at an open home and can be achieved easily by lighting a candle for half an hour before an open home starts (make sure to blow it out before people arrive for safety reasons!) or a bouquet of pleasant-smelling flowers on the kitchen bench can be lovely. At open homes, people are going to want to touch all your benches and surfaces – it’s just a weird thing people do for no reason. Definitely make sure there are no sticky surfaces in your home and that everything is wiped down and not damp from cleaning liquids.

Lastly, taste is the perfect opportunity to give your open home that extra push it needs. Bake some cookies or have a platter of nice cheeses and crackers out for potential buyers to have a snack. They’ll be grateful that you put in so much extra effort – and if the food is really good, they’ll definitely remember your home for it.

So there you have it, the devil is in the details! Home staging requires a lot more effort than you’d expect. If you would like some expert help with staging your whole home or partial staging in the Wellington area, contact us today to arrange a consultation with a trusted specialist.