Staging is the essential foundation from which your home’s marketing plan begins. Just as pricing your property too high could render your listing dead on arrival, so too will a poorly executed marketing plan. Staging isn’t exactly rocket science but there is quite a bit of science involved when staging is done correctly. We begin inside the home, as I have already addressed exterior prepping and staging in a prior post. First up are the obvious readying your house for sale tips.
- Q-Tip clean: Ultimately, your home should be so clean that the question you will be asked about your house is ” you don’t stay here often, do you.” It needs to be that clean. Which means that you will begin with a professional cleaning company to come in and concentrate on the baths and your kitchen, polish floors, clean carpets, baseboards, the tracks of sliding glass doors, clean the windows, dust and polish light fixtures, clean interior cabinets and polish the wood. Your blinds, shutters and curtains need to be cleaned as well. When searching for a good cleaning company it’s a good idea to ask a custom builder or your realtor for a referral rather than pick a company randomly out of the phone book or use the lowest cost bidder that gets the contract work at tract home sites. If you prefer to do your own cleaning then I suggest you purchase a few outstanding specialty products to add to your favorite household cleaners. Edfred Shower Stall & Tile Cleaner (Orchard Supply/Ace Hardware) removes hard water spots, soap and oxidation on your shower glass doors and can clean the chrome, grout and tile as well. If you have marble floors and countertops, shop at a marble supply store and pick up a product called “StoneTech Professional” for cleaning and polishing. In a separate post I recommended Signature Isbell’s Cleaning Polish and Conditioner for stainless steel, wood, door thresholds and wrought iron (available online here). Make sure that all your doorknobs and light switches are clean – never sticky.
- De-clutter and De-personalize: Your home’s staging will begin somewhat painfully, with the removal of most of your favorite nic-nacs, accessories, paintings, family pictures and collectibles. These things can become a distraction from your home’s attributes and should be kept at a minimum. People are going to want to visualize their things in your home, so it’s important to promote easy spatial thinking. Fear not, after a few days you will get used to the clutter-free look and may even feel less stressed in your home: too much stuff can become oppressive. Besides, your tabletops will not be devoid of all things decorative. The rule of thumb for decorative groupings on coffee tables, sofa tables, and counters is to display items in groups of three or five. For example, you can have a carved standing wooden object, a candle and a plant forming a triangle on a coffee table and the display will be homey without being distracting. You can add a small glass bowl of chocolates and a book as well. Next, your stager will want to remove most of the paintings from your walls and all of your family photos. I know, ouch. Again, these are distractions from the space that you are selling. Plus, our minds are very inquisitive and we enjoy solving puzzles about other people. If you have your last vacation photo of the two of you on your fireplace mantle, people will naturally regard everything they see in the rest of your house as additional information about you. Remember, that too much of you will transform your showings into a lifestyle tour of your life – and people will forget the space and remember you. (Wonderful You).
- Neutral Colors and generic accessories: If you have some fun crazy paint colors going on, it’s important to tone things down by repainting in generic taupe or beige. As an aside, I recall a new housing development where the models were all decorated using very bold complimentary wall colors. As the development built out, people began copying the boldness that the interior designer had used to decorate the models. Unfortunately, very few people pulled it off properly and their homes looked like little chopped-up condiments: ketchup, mustard and relish. O-K. Back to neutral colors and generic accessories. It is important that your stager strives to make your home as generic as possible while taking into consideration the demographic (age, income, education) and psychographic (values, attitudes, lifestyles) profile of your targeted buyer(s). You want congruity: furniture and accessories tied to price point, architectural style and area lifestyle perceptions.
Lifestyle Vignettes: It is important that each room in your house has a stated purpose. Which means that your extra bedroom that became a storage room years ago needs to be transformed back into a bedroom. Stagers can be very resourceful about creating something out of very little.For instance, the two thumbnail pictures are a Before and After that I recently did. The finished bedroom is an illusion: two inflatable mattresses with down comforter and pillows, a 
detachable floor screen, movable art and the ubiquitous curly willow display on a small bedside table. Moving along, in your dining room, your table should be set for four with the table expansion removed and excess chairs away from the table - otherwise the room will look small and cluttered. Another anecdote. I was looking through a photographer’s portfolio and came across a dining room that had been staged by a decorator rather than a stager. The dining room table was quite large and she set it for 12. What came to my mind was “no elbow room.” Additionally, it looked like she was selling a table, not marketing a house. In fact, that table became such a source of pride for her that the photographer didn’t even bother to shoot the room with a wide-angle lens – leaving one to wonder if there were 
any doors or windows or perhaps a fireplace in the dining room. Who knew.Getting back to your home’s staging: most of what will be displayed to replace your accessories will be tactile textures to achieve a more sensory experience and natural elements: Large floor vases with dramatic branches of curly willow trees; baskets with green apples; rolled-up Egyptian towels; river rocks; lavender and imported soap displays. Your stager will also draw attention to the most significant areas of your house through staged vignettes, e.g., chairs rearranged in front of the living room fireplace with a classic novel opened up with a pair of reading glasses, used as a page-marker; an outdoor dining table set with wine glasses and a bowl of green apples; a large bathroom transformed into a resort style retreat – including the transference of your shampoo and shower gel into beautiful display bottles. Then there is the silly and over-used guest bedroom bed- tray, which brings to mind illness rather than pampering, in my opinion. In the kitchen a stager will remove all small appliances from your counters (coffee maker is negotiable) and place a wine display and baskets of fruit, an orchid, and perhaps a trio of decorative jars filled with colorful peppers in oil.
Since staging is foundational marketing, the homeowner should not pay for it unless the house is empty. If you are paying an agent to market your property, they should market your property – not make excuses. Should you require rental furnishings, pricing for a small home begins at $1000 a month for a modest but tasteful look. Depending on the stager, they should also have access to antiques and estate pieces for very high-end properties.
If all goes according to plan, your home should sell faster than competing properties and may sell at a higher sales to list price. Of course, while staging is not 100% guaranteed to work in every sale, it may be best to think of it in terms of the following sports analogy: The best team doesn’t always win the Superbowl, but that doesn’t mean that they wasted their time in training. You always want to give every endeavor your absolute best.
At the end of the day, you are far better off in knowing that everything possible was done to professionally market your house. You don’t want to regret what could have been, if only . . .