It’s no big surprise that when potential buyers are touring your home, one area they’re likely to linger is in the living room. After all, the living room tends to be one of the epicenters of family activity; potential buyers want to make sure they can imagine it as their living space, not just yours.
Needless to say, then, you’re going to want to make your living room look its best. And whether you’re working with an agent or wish to sell your own home, that means staging.
So what are some ways you can stage your living room to maximize its appeal? We’ve got you covered!
House Selling Tips: How to Stage Your Living Room
- Use bright colors for accent pieces. Chances are, your paint job, your flooring, and even your furniture are all light or neutral in color. That’s fine—ideal, actually—but you do want to add a few splashes of brightness that attract the eye. Pillows, throw blankets, and decor items can all be helpful.
- Arrange knickknacks in odd groupings. If you have little odds and ends that you’re displaying, arrange them in groups of three or five, as opposed to even-numbered groups. This tends to be a little more pleasing to the eye.
- Bring in a few plants. No, you don’t want to turn your living room into a greenhouse… but bringing in a few small plants can produce a nice dash of color. Additionally, they fill your living room with, well, life. And, they even help freshen the air! There are many reasons why some well-placed plant life can offer you help to sell your home.
- Think in terms of traffic flow. You want your living room to look nice, but you also want the space to be functional—that is, you want people to be able to walk through the room without tripping over each other or bumping into the furniture. You may consider rearranging your furniture in a way that improves traffic flow.
- Be strategic in furniture size. There are really two schools of thought here. One says that you want small furniture pieces to make the room look more spacious; if you have a lot of furniture in a smaller area, opting for smaller sizes is definitely wise. But if you have a cavernous living room without as much decor, it can actually be smarter to get a really big sofa that you can employ as a centerpiece.
- Use mirrors. An old real estate agent’s trick: If you want to make your room look a little more spacious, a few judiciously placed mirrors can work wonders!
- Employ soft fabrics. You want your living room to feel warm, welcoming, and comfortable—and one of the best ways you can do that is to use some soft fabrics, like silk and satin. Again, throw blankets and pillows can be amazing assets.
- Don’t block windows. One of our top home selling tips is to maximize natural light, so arranging furniture that covers the windows is a big no-no.
- Use lamps strategically. Along the same lines, make sure you have lamps plugged in and turned on in areas that illuminate corners, nooks, and dark recesses.
- Minimize personal items. When you go to sell your own home, it’s important that you create a place where buyers can envision themselves living and being happy. That means scaling back on personal photos and knickknacks, which can make it difficult for buyers to forget that the home is yours, not theirs.
Find Additional Help to Sell Your Home
As you try to sell your home, you want to make each room pop… and the living room is one of the most important of all. With the right staging, you can make your living room a real asset, not a hindrance, to your home sale.
Something else we encourage you to do is request your free seller’s report, available from SOLD.com. In it, you’ll get some individualized advice for how best to put your home on the market. Specifically, we’ll recommend whether you should list with an agent, sell to an i-buyer, or even go the FSBO route.
Get the personalized tips you need for your home sale. Grab a copy of your SOLD.com report today!
