Clever Styling Tips to Sell Your Home

Rightmove has produced a report stating, “Record low interest rates, and the new focus on what your home needs to offer after several lockdowns, have led us to the greatest excess of demand over supply in the last ten years.” In the first time for quite a long time, it’s now a sellers’ market where buyers are looking for an extra bedroom and an office space to work from home.

If you’re thinking of selling, now is the perfect time to spruce up your home and put it up for sale because there are more potential buyers eagerly looking for their next dream home. But, just because there are more people looking doesn’t mean that you can be sloppy with your styling because an unattractive home will still result in the buyer slashing your asking price.

Here are my top tips to help you present your home to attract your potential buyers, achieve your asking price and sell your property quickly.

• GIVE EACH ROOM A CLEAR FUNCTION

When you call a space ‘the junk room’, a ‘nothing room’ or ‘the spare room’, you’re immediately devaluing your property. Buyers are looking for a useful space and their dream home, so they’ll feel disappointed when presented with an unloved or messy room. It’s particularly important to create a great entrance so your potential buyers feel welcomed and your home looks attractive the instant they step through your front door.

Clear out the junk and style your space so that it looks attractive, spacious and organised. The most attractive rooms to buyers, at the moment, are bedrooms and an office space. As a side note, if you’re selling a three bedroom house then please make sure that you’re showing three bedrooms and not two bedroom with an office in the third bedroom. I wouldn’t compromise a bedroom for an office when you’re selling, because you can always style a bedroom with a mini desk to show it as a dual purpose space.

• PRESENT A BALANCED AND COHESIVE COLOUR SCHEME

Colour is your best friend or your arch enemy when selling because it can entice buyers to either love or loathe your home. That’s why you’ll find many show homes basking in neutral colours that are non offensive, but what happens to your home that you’ve lovingly decorated and personalised over the years? Do you really need to repaint and change the colour scheme of your interior when you’re selling your home?

For the main living spaces, I do recommend that you neutralise the main walls of your space. You could use an off-white, soft taupe or pale colour to make your home look fresh and feel spacious.

In your bedrooms, a little personality can be attractive but please be mindful of strong colours such as red walls that come across as dominating and aggressive. They’re a real turn off for buyers and you’d be wise to change the colour or add a neutral to balance the strong colour.

To make your home feel balanced and cohesive, blend colours together and use them throughout your home in different proportions, eg: here are two different homes with a blue and white colour scheme…

For both of these homes, colour has been used to accent certain areas and provide some personalisation to the property. After all, if you’re buying a home that’s lived in, you want it to feel clean and fresh but with a welcoming and homely atmosphere.

• SPACE SELLS

The most effective change you can make to help sell your home is to organise every room, cupboard and shelf so that your home looks neat, tidy, spacious and welcoming. When your property is bulging with stuff, buyers find it difficult to see themselves living in your home.

Clear up, tidy and organise every room so that it looks inviting, especially as buyers enter your home and when they open up your cupboard. There should be space to put your coats and shoes when you enter your home, room for the spare toilet rolls in the bathroom, an uncluttered worktop space in the kitchen and plenty of floor space in the living room.

If you are someone who has lots of stuff then now is the time to pare down your accessories. Only items that ‘add value’ to your room should be on display, for example: soft toys in the master bedroom are very personal to you but unimportant to your buyer. Although it’s your home, now is the time to let go of things that you’ve been hanging on to. That’s not to say that you need to get rid of everything because you can pack away sentimental items that you want to take to your new home.

Now that your home is looking amazing it’s time to take those all important photos to showcase your home to potential buyers. As many homes are now viewed on the internet, it’s worth styling your home so that it looks great for the photographs. To get some ideas for attractive photos, take a wander through Pinterest, look at holiday home styling or browse interior design websites. You’ll find plenty of ideas on the BIID website that’s full of expert interior designer experts like myself. Choose a designer whose style you admire and use their styling for your inspiration.

I hope this has given you lots of ideas and inspiration to style your home perfectly. I recommend that you style your home before you put it on the market so that you optimise the attractiveness of your home. You can then draw in those buyers who are eager to move into your home, enabling you to move out and move on with your new life.

Remember this checklist:

1. Give each room a clear function
2. Present a balanced and cohesive colour scheme
3. Make space by getting organised
4. Take inspirational photos of your lovely home

If you’re struggling to sell your home and need my expert guidance, then I’m always here to help.

If you’re not sure what styling for sale is or how I can help you attract your perfect buyer and achieve your asking price, checkout this video for more information:

STYLE FOR SALE OVERVIEW

Gwendoline

BIID Interior Designer & House Dr Consultant

M: 07841 519802