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Stage my home


6 Ways to Stage Your Home for Free

By

Ronique Gibson

Ronique Gibson

Ronique Gibson wrote for The Spruce for more than two years, covering home design and home staging topics. She is a trained architect and is LEED AP certified. She also launched a home lifestyle site in 2009 and has written for such publications as Better Homes & Gardens Kitchen + Bath and Houzz.

Learn more about The Spruce's Editorial Process

Updated on 05/11/22

Fact checked by

Emily Estep

Fact checked by Emily Estep

Emily Estep is a plant biologist and fact-checker focused on environmental sciences. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and a Master of Science in Plant Biology from Ohio University. Emily has been a proofreader and editor at a variety of online media outlets over the past decade.

Learn more about The Spruce's Editorial Process

The Spruce / Christopher Lee Foto

Do you think it costs a lot to stage your home? When it comes to selling a home, appearance is everything. Home staging can make all the difference. Most home sellers think they have to break the bank to stage their homes, but this isn’t the case. It is possible to stage a home for free.

Clean Everything Thoroughly

Have you ever wondered why hotels are always so warm and welcoming? It’s because everything is cleaned regularly to appeal to customers daily. When cleaning your home, focus on making it as clean as a hotel. Dust, vacuum, mop, and wash everything—even the pets.

Homebuyers will look inside closets and under sinks, so you must clean every nook and cranny. Get rid of carpet dents, chipped paint, and other negative features. After you’re done, ask a friend to assess your handiwork before you open your doors to buyers. Consider these house cleaning tips to get you started.

Declutter and Depersonalize Each Room

A junky home is a sign of a homeowner that doesn't care about their home. It doesn't require any money to declutter your home. Clutter is an eyesore and causes buyers not to focus on what’s important. It also makes a home appear small. Get rid of everything you don’t use or need. Don’t put it in the closet. Buyers love inspecting closets, and if yours are cluttered, they may deter a sale. Learn how to declutter your home room by room. 

After decluttering, pack your personal belongings like family photos and knickknacks. Buyers come to see your home, not your stuff. They will not be able to picture themselves in the space if all they see are your things. Remove yourself from the picture.

How to Stage Your Home for a Quick Sale

When real estate agents talk about staging your home, they're referring to a method of preparing a property for sale on the real estate marketplace. Staging is designed to showcase a home's best assets, impress buyers, and sell it quickly for the highest possible price.

Because not all sellers stage their homes–especially homes in lower price ranges–you'll be at an advantage if you elect to take the extra step of staging your property. Here's how.

Key Takeaways

What Is Home Staging?

Good staging is “a form of visual merchandising that draws on some of the fundamentals of interior design,” says Gordon Roberts, a broker with Sotheby’s International Realty. “The object of staging is to flatter the property but not be too obvious about it, like being dressed without drawing particular attention to what you’re wearing.”

Melinda Massie, who owns a Fort Worth home organizing firm, says that good staging lets the buyers imagine themselves in the home, shows off its good features and hides its flaws, turns weird spaces into usable spaces, creates a mood (stagers call it “emotional” staging), and makes the home look significantly better in photos.  

Home staging is not the same as decorating. Decorating is about personal style, while staging makes your home appealing to the largest pool of buyers.

Why Home Staging Is Important

When dealing with such a significant financial transaction as selling a home, you don't want to settle for a lower selling price or a longer marketing period than you have to.

Relative to the amount of time and money involved, staging may be one of the most lucrative projects you ever undertake. Potential buyers aren't just looking for a structure to inhabit—they're also looking for a way to fulfill their dreams and improve their lifestyles. Staging can create a more emotional purchase for the buyer, which ultimately can generate more money for the seller.

Home staging is also beneficial because potential buyers don't want to see work that needs to be done upon moving into the home. For every problem they see, they'll deduct its cost from their offering price. If they see too many problems, they may pass completely on buying the home.

Benefits of Home Staging

Staging a home makes it visually more appealing and allows potential homebuyers to envision how the home might look once they move in to it, making it look more move-in ready. Having furnishings and wall hangings in place is often more inviting than empty rooms and blank walls.

According to the 2021 Profile of Home Staging, a report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 47% of buyers' agents said that staging positively affected most buyers' opinions of a home.

The report also found that 82% of buyers' agents say staging makes it easier for buyers to visualize a property as their future home, which can help the home sell faster. According to the report, staging the living room was found to be very important to 46% of buyers, followed by the master bedroom, at 43% and the kitchen at 35%.

Options on How to Stage a Home

Many full-service realtors today will take care of staging your home, many of whom may hire a professional stager to assist in the process. They will find and procure the appropriate furnishings and accessories to keep the home looking good while you're moved out and showing the property. The cost to stage may be split between the homeowner and the realtor's expected commission, but expect to pay between 1% and 3% of the home's selling price on staging.

New trends have homeowners opting for DIY home staging (as opposed to hiring a professional stager) and limiting the number of buyers who come into the home for in-person showings. Yet staging remains an important tool because a well-staged home looks better in photographs—and most buyers are looking for homes online. Be prepared to pay for things like painting, storage organizers, furniture and furnishings rentals, floral arrangements, and cleaning supplies.

Below, we list a dozen tips for how to go about staging your home.

12 Home Staging Tips

According to the NAR report, the most common rooms that are staged are the living room (93%), kitchen (84%), owner's bedroom (78%), and the dining room (72%).

Of course, time and money determine the level of staging that is practical for your home. Try to employ the following techniques in as many rooms of the house as you can afford and have time for.

1. Clean

A clean home shows potential buyers that you've taken good care of the property. Ideally, you should clean every part of the house, from the floors to the ceilings—and everything in between.

If you don't have new appliances in the kitchen, make sure the existing ones are spotless. Likewise, make sure your bathrooms sparkle, from the corners of the tub, to the sink drain, to that spot behind the toilet you don't think anyone can see. Your goal should be to make everything look new.

$1,500

The median amount spent on home staging, when using a specialized staging service was $1,500, according to NAR's 2021 Profile of Home Staging Report.

2. Declutter

There are two major problems with clutter. One is that it distracts buyers from your home's features. The other is that it makes it seem like the home has less space.

Now is the time to box up and put into storage the things you don't need on a day-to-day basis (think: knickknacks, games, papers, seasonal clothes, and messy hobbies). It's also time to get rid of things you no longer need—like the expired food in the back of the cabinets, and the clothes and toys the kids have long since outgrown. The more empty storage space you have, the better.

3. Depersonalize

Buyers need to be able to envision themselves in your home, so remove all the family photos, keepsakes, and refrigerator art. Keep clothes hidden away as much as possible, and make sure the bathroom counters are empty (except for hand soap, of course). Likewise, put away all the toys and anything else that is highly personal or evocative of the home's current inhabitants.

4. Focus on Fresh

A few potted plants can do wonders to make your home feel fresh and inviting. If you have a lot of plants, space them out strategically so they don't overwhelm any one area (unless you have a greenhouse). Of course, dead and dying plants don't do much to make your home look well tended.

Another way to make your home seem fresh is to get rid of odors. Pets, kids, last night's dinner, a damp bathroom, and many other conditions can make your home smell. Inexpensive tricks for ridding a home of odors and giving it an inviting aroma include baking cinnamon-coated apples or cookies in the oven (be careful not to burn them), or burning vanilla-scented candles.

It's also a good idea to wipe down the kitchen sink with half a lemon, then grind it in the garbage disposal to remove sink odors. While you could use an air freshener to deodorize your home, it's best to avoid these since they can trigger allergic reactions and asthma in sensitive people. If you're a smoker and you normally smoke indoors, start limiting your smoking to outside the home and take extra steps to deodorize indoors. Finally, don't forget to take out the trash.

Essential oils (mix one cup of water with eight to 10 drops of oil in a spray bottle, and spray toward the center of each room), herbs and flowers, beeswax candles, and air purifiers are chemical-free ways to freshen the air in your home.

5. Define Rooms

Make sure that each room has a single, defined purpose. And make sure that every space within each room has a purpose. This will help buyers see how to maximize the home's square footage. If you have a finished attic, make it into an office. A finished basement can become an entertainment room, and a junk room can be transformed into a guest bedroom.

Even if the buyer doesn't want to use the room for the same purpose, the important thing is for them to see that every inch of the home is usable space. This includes alcoves, window seats, corners, breakfast nooks, and other areas.

6. Wallpaper and Paint

It is unlikely that a potential buyer will like your wallpaper. Your best bet is to tear it down and paint the walls with a neutral color instead. It's best not to paint over the wallpaper because it may look shabby and send a signal to the buyer about work they may have to do later.

Potential buyers will likely feel the same way about custom paint colors. You may love your orange bathroom, but people's tastes in colors are very specific and highly personal. You might think white walls are ideal because they create a blank slate that allows buyers to envision their own décor and gives them an easy starting point. However, it's actually better to paint your home with warm, neutral colors.

7. Flooring

No one wants to live in a home with dirty, stained carpet, especially when someone else was the one who dirtied it. And linoleum is outdated and looks cheap. Although pricey, hardwood floors add value and elegance to a home. They are also low maintenance, provide great long-term value, and are perfect for buyers with allergies. In other words, they appeal to almost everyone, and if not, they're easily carpeted over by the buyer and preserved for the next owner.

Common areas like the living room, dining room, and kitchen should be your main focus if you are going to add hardwood floors. Ideally, you should upgrade the bathrooms, too. They have relatively little floor area and therefore won't be too expensive. In kitchens and bathrooms, go with ceramic tile or stone if you can afford it. If not, use high-quality vinyl tiles that mimic these more expensive materials.

8. Lighting

Take advantage of your home's natural light. Open all curtains and blinds when showing your home. Add fixtures where necessary, and turn on all the lights for showings (including those in the closets). This makes your home appear brighter and more inviting, and it saves buyers from having to hunt for light switches. If you think your existing fixtures are fine, be sure to dust them and clean off any grime. Otherwise, outdated and broken light fixtures are easy and cheap to replace.

9. Furniture

Make sure furniture is the right size for the room, and don't clutter a room with too much of it. Furniture that's too big will make a room look small, while too little or too small furniture can make a space feel cold.

Don't use cheap furniture, either. You don't have to pay a lot of money to switch out your existing furniture—and you may even be able to rent furniture to stage your home. Either way, make sure the furniture looks nice, tidy, and inviting. You can use throw pillows to add contrast and a pop of color.

You'll also want to arrange the furniture in a way that makes each room feel spacious, homey, and easy to navigate. In the living room, for example, seating should be set up in a way that creates a comfortable conversation area.

10. Walls and Ceilings

Cracks in the walls or ceiling are red flags to buyers because they may indicate foundation problems. If your home does have foundation problems, you will need to either fix them or alert potential buyers to them; fixing any foundation problems would be better in terms of getting the home sold. If the foundation only looks bad but has been deemed sound by an inspector, repair the cracks so you don't scare off buyers for no good reason.

11. Exterior

The exterior and the entryway—which factor into the home's "curb appeal"—are important points of focus because they can heavily impact a buyer's first impression. They may even determine someone's interest in viewing the inside of the house.

Make sure your lawn, hedges, trees, and other plants are neatly pruned, and be sure to get rid of any weeds. Wash windows well, and consider adding flower boxes to brighten them up even more. If you can, power wash your home's exterior—this can make it look almost freshly painted but with less effort and expense.

Make sure the sidewalk leading up to the house is clear and clean, and buy new doormats for the front and back doors. If you have a pool, showcase it by making sure it's crystal clear. Creating some sort of outdoor living space in the backyard, such as a deck or patio with outdoor furniture, is another way to use the exterior of your home to its greatest advantage.

12. Final Touches

Just before any open house or showing, make sure that your staging efforts have the maximum impact with a few last-minute touches that will make the home seem warm and inviting. Put fresh flowers in vases, let fresh air into the house for at least ten minutes beforehand so it isn't stuffy, light a few candles (soft and subtle fragrances only), and put new, plush towels in the bathrooms.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of home staging?

A well-staged home will sell for more than one that's not been gussied up. Home shoppers, when they enter a nicely staged home, can imagine themselves living there. A home that's not staged will force a buyer to look past all of the seller's possessions to imagine the home as theirs. Photos of a properly staged home look better in online listings, which help sell the property.

How important is home staging?

Relative to the amount of time and money involved, staging may be one of the most lucrative projects you ever undertake. Potential buyers aren't just looking for a structure to inhabit—they're also looking for a way to fulfill their dreams and improve their lifestyle. Staging can create a more emotional purchase for the buyer, which ultimately can generate more money for the seller.

Is it better to sell a house empty or staged?

Some people argue that selling a house empty is better since potential buyers can better envision their own belongings and furnishings in the space and use the blank template to let their imaginations run. Plus, you would save on the costs to stage. Still, industry reports show that staged homes do often sell faster.

How expensive is home staging?

The median amount spent on home staging, when using a specialized staging service was $1,500, according to NAR's 2021 Profile of Home Staging Report. Still, a seller can spend more if needed, or if they feel the added expense will yield a better price. Expect to pay between 1% and 3% of the home's selling price on staging.

The Bottom Line

Even if you have plenty of cash, don't put too much money into the staging process. You want to emphasize the home's best features, but keep in mind that what sells the home and what makes the home usable for the buyer are not necessarily the same thing.

Overall, to get the most bang for your buck, your home staging efforts should be designed to appeal to the widest possible range of buyers. The more people willing to submit purchase offers for your home, the higher the selling price will be.

iOS - Home - Apple (UK)

In the Home app, you can easily and securely control your HomeKit accessories from any Apple device: turn off the lights, see who rings the bell, adjust the temperature in the living room, turn on the music and do many other things. And HomeKit secure video and HomeKit-enabled routers make remote control even more secure. With the Home app, all your connected devices work much more efficiently. And smarter.

nine0004 One app for all
smart home elements.

The Home app makes it easy to set up and manage any compatible accessories. More than a hundred partner companies around the world are developing devices that support the HomeKit platform, and more and more every day. These accessories have been tested and approved by Apple so you can use them safely.

Look for this icon in stores and on websites.

Each room has its own rules.

The Home app groups your HomeKit accessories by room, so you can control devices anywhere in your home with a tap or a click. For example, ask Siri to "Turn off the lights in the bedroom" or "Set the temperature to 24 degrees. " And for the more complex task of dimming the lights or adjusting the thermostat, simply press and hold the desired icon. If your TV supports AirPlay 2 1 , you can add it to the Home app and control it in the same way as other accessories: turn it on and off, change the volume level, and switch between input sources.

Your house is only


under your supervision.

Your CCTV footage contains a lot of personal information. Any activity recorded by cameras that support HomeKit secure video is analyzed in your home in compliance with privacy rules. The smart home control device determines whether there are people, animals or cars on the recordings. If the system notices something important, you will receive a notification - other users who control the smart home with you will also receive it. The resulting video fragment can be viewed directly from the lock screen. The recording will be available for viewing in the Home app for ten days. At the same time, the file itself is stored in the iCloud account (if supported) and is not taken into account when calculating the remaining free space. There is no storage fee. nine0109 2 Leading camera manufacturers such as Eufy, Logitech and Netatmo have already announced support for HomeKit secure video.

HomeKit


routers secure your smart home.

Smart devices connected to the Internet may be subject to cyberattacks. HomeKit-enabled routers help build the foundation of smart home security. With the help of such a router, all devices can be separated, so that even if one of them is hacked, an attacker will not be able to access other devices and the information stored on them. In the Home app, you can choose which services your HomeKit accessories can share data over the intranet and the internet. nine0003

Run script


with a single gesture. Or in a word.

Create custom scenarios for multiple devices and control them with a single command. For example, the scenario "Leaving the house" can turn off the lights, close the doors and turn off the heating at the same time. And the Movie Night scenario will turn on the AirPlay 2-enabled TV, lower the curtains, and dim the lights.

Morning

Create a scenario for the morning:
open the curtains, turn on the heating and the coffee maker.

Coming home

When you return, the garage and front door will be open,
and the lights will turn on.

Night

When you decide it's time to go to bed, the evening scenario will work: the lights will turn off, the temperature will drop, all doors will be closed.

Siri is now an on/off switch. And a switch. nine0006

Siri knows which devices are connected to HomeKit in your home and keeps track of their status. 3 You can ask Siri to turn one of them on or off, dim the lights, change the song, or run one of your scripts. You can also stream music from your iPhone or iPad to an AirPlay 2-enabled TV. And if you have an Apple TV, you can ask Siri to launch the I'm Home scenario while you're on the road. And by your return, the house will be light and warm - as if you never left. nine0003

Hey Siri, turn off the lights downstairs

Control your HomeKit accessories.

Hey Siri, turn on Night Scene

Create scenarios with multiple HomeKit accessories.

Hey Siri, make it warmer

Control your HomeKit accessories.

Hey Siri, play some jazz in the kitchen

Control your AirPlay 2 audio system.

Other examples of commands you can use with Siri

Control your home from anywhere.

The Home app allows you to remotely control smart home components using your Apple TV or iPad. 4 You can, for example, close the garage door, watch the video from the entrance camera, and even ask Siri to lower the temperature on the thermostat - all the things you usually do when you use the application at home.

Home on autopilot.

nine0138

Apple TV and iPad allow you to start some smart home features automatically. For example, you can make accessories or scenarios turn on at a certain time, when sensors are triggered, or under other circumstances. One setting - and the house is in complete order.

Location

Set the light
so that it turns on
when you drive
to the garage.

Time

Set the alarm
not only for yourself, but also for heating your home. nine0003

Action

Have the motion sensor in the corridor
turn on the light in the kitchen when you
approach it.

Presence of people

Script operation may depend
on whether someone is
at home
or not. For example, the light turns off
automatically when everyone leaves.

Getting started is easy.

HomeKit accessories connect easily and securely to the Home app. It is enough to touch the icon of the connected device or scan the HomeKit setup code located on the accessory or its instructions. And a pair with an iOS or iPadOS device will be instantly created. In addition, the Home app can recognize HomeKit accessories that have been previously set up through other apps. nine0003

Resources

Manage the house
Using Siri

Read more

Create
Automation templates
In the House Appendix

Read more

Use Apple TV
or iPad as a smart house control

more details

Contract control
everything that happens at home,
with secure HomeKit video

Learn more

Protect your
home network with
HomeKit routers

More details

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We tell you why your own apartment is a sense of security, and how to profitably acquire modern, economical, technologically comfortable housing.

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Learn more