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How to Stage a House to Sell

Home staging really does make a huge difference! Read on and check out our before and after pictures. I’ll share how to stage a house to sell and why it will make all the difference.

how to stage a house to sell - before and after pictures

Home Staging Makes a Huge Difference

Thank you guys so, so much for your kind words on our big moving announcement. We are so excited (and very tired!).

Like I mentioned, our house had multiple offers the first day we listed! I know that was a combination of things—a great seller’s market, an awesome agent(ahem my husband), excellent interior design, etc, but Scott and I also attribute a huge part of that to the staging we did in the home.

How To Stage A House

If you aren’t familiar with staging, it’s a way to “set the stage” for the big selling-your-house production. You strip your home of most of your unnecessary things and personality to turn it into an impressionable home that is generic enough for the general population to imagine themselves living in it.

Staging is a ton of work, but it lets the home shine.

Some people might feel like there’s a “trick” to stage, but it’s not at all. You aren’t selling your stuff. You aren’t selling your adorable family portraits. You aren’t selling your kids’ artwork. Sorry. You’re selling a house, and unless it comes fully-furnished people need to be able to really see past the stuff and to the house.

So, here’s how we tackled staging. It’s simple, it’s effective and anyone can do it. Yes, even you!

1. Declutter and Get Rid of Stuff

You know on the Property Brother’s shows where they come in and see the house and then before they leave they say “you’ve got a lot of work to do tonight, you need to get rid of everything you possibly can?”

Well, once again, Jonathan and Drew know what they are talking about. It is a lot of work BUT IT IS SO FUN!!!

Seriously, it’s fun! We got to go through so many fun memories and so many random drawers of garbage. We donated enough stuff to charity to fill a minivan completely packed—twice! We got rid of a TON of trash. Like bags and bags full.

See?

A pile of trash on the curb. First home staging step is to declutter

Obviously some of this (a lot of this) is construction debris from when the master bath was getting its glorious makeover. There were still at least 15 yard bags full of decluttered stuff.

Plus, this is a great time to get rid of things that don’t bring you joy or add to your life. All those too-small jeans? Gone. Extra sets of mixing bowls? See ya.

Basically anytime we looked at something and said, “I don’t feel like packing that and unpacking that is worth it to me” we would toss/donate it.

The rest of the stuff that we wanted to keep, but didn’t want to necessarily have out in our home while it was listed we stored in a POD.  This was great because not only is our stuff out of the house and out of the way now, but it has been extremely helpful in the moving process.

We are scheduling our pod to arrive at the new house at the end of the month which will give us about 3 weeks to get the stuff we deemed necessities set up and put away.

Extra belongings in a storage pod

2. Rethink Your Rooms

My next home staging tip is to look at each room from the eyes of the new buyer.

You want people to walk away imagining them living there, not you. So look at each room impartially and think, “what can I do to neutralize this room while still giving it a purpose?”

In our case each room was pretty defined, but we decided to dismantle my favorite room, the studio, a bit. Sad! But needed. Why? Very few buyers would come to our house and think that having a 3rd bedroom as a studio is a great idea. Most people would probably want it to be a bedroom. Or at the very least, and office.

So we took out the table, added a chair and left it pretty empty. Excuse the “after” photo. I somehow never made it back to take more pics after we cleaned up the next day. Also, we did put a cushion on the chair. 🙂

Moving and packing up the contents of a home office how to stage a house to sell - a nice clean extra bedroom with lots of room for possibilities

3. De-Personalize Your Home

Okay, don’t hate me. But, please put the pictures of your family away.

I know your kids are super cute and your cat is the furriest lovely thing around, but buyers aren’t there to tour your house. They are there to see your house and decide if they want to live there. Anything that screams you? Take it down. Sorry!

Take our laundry room for example. Boring. Nothing but literal necessities.

A bare clean laundry room in a house that is staged to sell

4. Neutralize the Paint Colors

I got lucky here since we already picked neutral paint colors throughout our home.

If you have a taste for bright, bold walls, that’s awesome, but paint them a boring color. Personally, I love neutrals. They aren’t for everyone but they are for most people. You are playing a numbers game and want to appeal to the masses!

budget bathroom makeover - a neutral room that is staged to sell

5. Rearrange Furniture

Of course, your rooms are set up so they make sense and are functional. Duh, that’s the point of a house. But in some cases, function has to die a bit to play up the pretty or tone down a weak area in the house.

For example, in our house we have these amazing, thick concrete countertops that you can pull up a barstool and sit at. We didn’t really use that part because we had a couch there and liked to use it as a console table for our drinks. It functioned, but wasn’t pretty.

Our living room was also narrow and having larger furniture in there played that up. So, we got rid of the couch. We literally gave it away.

We took the stools from my studio room (since it was no longer a studio!) and played up the concrete counters. The weird thing is we loved that setup and would opt to keep it that way I think!

Here is the before (tons of style and personality!) and the after (tons of room to imagine!).

The living room before it was staged to sell in the picture on top and after it was staged in the picture on the bottom

6. Clean Your House

This is a good time to bring in professionals. Deep clean like you’ve never cleaned before. The tile, the grout, the ceiling fans, windows, etc. You want the entire place to be spotless. The real trick is—you have to keep it that way! At least until it’s sold.

But again, a nice perk is you get to experience what living in a really clean, airy house feels like. Win-win!

A nice clean kitchen island with a sink and stovetop

That’s it. 6 super simple ways to stage—and sell!—your house! 🙂

If you have ever wondered, “how do I stage a home to sell” I hope this answered your questions! I just had to keep reminding myself to make the house feel like something the buyer could see themselves in. It really helped me every step of the way.

Do Staged Homes Sell For More Money?

Yes, the potential to sell your house for more money is actually there if you stage your home. I was pretty shocked but according to the National Association of Realtors, “for every $100 you spend in staging your home, you could get $400 back.” That’s a pretty awesome ROI!

Here are some more posts I think you’ll love!

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how to gracefully survive while living in a remodel

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our complete before and after photos of our first flip with a link to all the posts and tutorials necessary!

Our secret house flip

yes, right after we finished this house, we did another and kept the whole thing secret until we were done! Lots more eye candy here. 

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Tania Griffis is an accomplished writer, blogger, and interior designer with a Journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma. She started her popular blog, Run to Radiance, in 2011, demonstrating her design expertise through the personal remodeling of six houses to millions of readers across the globe.

Tania also owns The Creative Wheelhouse, a respected ghostwriting agency for bloggers, further showcasing her talent for creating engaging and informative content.

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31 Comments

  1. Love Jonathan and Drew! I wish it was possible to to live in that perfectly clean house all the time, but I can’t afford a live-in maid to follow us around and clean up after us!! Staging your house is really important and can honestly make the difference between selling your home and being stuck there for months. I remember when I was looking for my last house, if a house was neat, clean, and bright, it was easier to see my family living there. If that’s what it takes, do it!

  2. These are great tips!! I think it can be hard to take the personal out of selling a house because houses are so personal. But you’re right – the buyer doesn’t care how cute your kids or cats are…they want to imagine their kids and cats in the space!

  3. Great tips, friend! Good point about depersonalizing, as sad as it is. And you’re right, it’s not a trick; it’s just reality! Can’t believe you filled up two minivan loads to donate! I agree, cleaning and decluttering was actually a pretty fun and freeing process! I couldn’t believe I had been living with all of those unnecessities stored up in my place for so long! 😛

  4. love your attitude about getting rid of the things that don’t give you joy — it’s something i try and do regularly. jon’s always hoping i’ll stop throwing things away, but, idk, i’m like the anti-hoarder 🙂 also, good advice about de-personalizing the house so others can imagine themselves there – i gotta remember that 🙂

  5. We are empty nesters looking to downsize and I cannot believe the number of times I dumped partially unsorted mail in a bag or a box to quickly hide clutter when guests were excpected . . .When I got to the back of my closet this week, I still had junk mail in a box from 2003!!! Establishing the habit of spending 5 minutes next to a (pretty) paper recycling bin near the entrance I use, when bringing in the daily mail, has really saved me time as well as clutter . . . Most colleges have a service organization that will accept donated clothing for “interview clothes give-aways for seniors” kind of like Prom Dress giveaways and/or exchanges that have been springing up in many communities, so EVERY ONE can afford to go to high school prom.

  6. Wonderful tips but OMG I hope I never have to stage my house, lol. Been living here for over 20 years and the STUFF I would have to pack, lol. Thanks for sharing, visiting from Best of the Weekend.

  7. Hello, I saw your link at the weekend retreat link party. We are considering putting our house up for sale, but I am dreading all the work that it takes to declutter and stage the home. I have 3 kids worth of toys to sort through..ughh. These are great tips! Thanks!

  8. This is perfect advice! We have moved many times and we have always been told to de-clutter and put away all those family photos. Sprucing up with some new accent pillows never hurt either! Great post!

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