If you’re selling a three or four bedroom house in a family neighborhood, it’s important to show kid’s rooms, even if there are no longer young children living in the house. It doesn’t take much to create the look and it’s an important part in romancing the target market for the home.

Home buyers have less imagination than you might think. That’s why home staging can make such a difference in the selling price of a home and the length of time it takes to sell.

When a couple with a young family walks through a childless home, it’s hard for them to imagine how their own family will live there. Questions come up like:

• Are the bedrooms appropriate for their kids?
• Where will they play?

Professional home stagers always keep the target market of a house in mind when staging. This helps paint a picture for the potential buyer by staging the house the way it would be lived in by them. With minimal furnishings and a few props, it’s easy to show a child’s bedroom!

Learn more about how Six Elements can help you when it’s time to decorate your house to sell.

Debra Gould, President Six Elements Inc.

Internationally recognized Home Staging expert Debra Gould president of Six Elements will supercharge the appeal of any property. If you’re looking to profit in the real estate market, your best investment may be a ‘decorate to sell’ consultation with Debra.

Many of us live in older homes that have layers of wallpaper that have been there for years. The thought of removing it becomes a roadblock to redecorating because we’re afraid of all the plastering work that will be needed if we take it down.

This is particularly true when you live in a home with plaster and lath construction, which was popular through to the 1950s when drywall was introduced in the US and Canada. If you’re not sure what type of walls you have, try hanging a picture. The nail will go smoothly into drywall, not so with plaster and lath that will crumble with age sometimes turning what was supposed to be a tiny nail hole into a quarter inch diameter mess!

If you’ve run into this problem just hanging pictures, it’s not hard to scare yourself out of removing layers of old wallpaper that may indeed be holding those old walls together. This doesn’t have to stop you from radically changing the look of your room with a new color of paint.

With proper priming you can paint over wallpaper!

Granted, this isn’t considered the “right” way to do things, but does it really matter if the alternative is living in a depressing space that you hate, or losing money trying to sell a lack-luster home?

Need help with your decorating or color project?

With a minimum two hour consultation in your home, we will tell you everything that needs to be done in your home (room by room and outside too). Contact us to learn more or arrange an appointment.

> Read more about our color consulting, interior redesign and home staging services.

Feel free to add your comments to this story. Have you ever tried to take down wallpaper before painting?

Home staging expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements Inc. She has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. Debra has gained international recognition and has been featured in major media in the US and Canada including: HGTV, CNN Money, CBC National News, CBS Radio, GlobalTV, CityTV, The Wall Street Journal, Woman’s Day, Reader’s Digest and more.

Newly renovated, but this is a depressing first view when you walk into the house. And it looks so small!

Whether you’re a builder about to list a spec home, an investor ready to sell your vacant property, or a home seller who is living in a house with empty rooms and you’re wondering whether to furnish them before listing your house, this article is for you.

If you are hoping to sell the home quickly and for as much money as possible, it’s a bad idea to try and sell a house with empty rooms.

Here are 5 reasons why you should always use furniture and/or accessories in a room rather than showing it empty:

1. People don’t buy houses, they buy homes.

This is the same main floor as shown in the image above. Now, this feels like a home that buyers can make an emotional attachment to! It's also important to give people a sense of how furniture fits in the space. Most potential home buyers can't visualize the possibilities without help. Notice how much bigger the area looks with furniture!

When you sell a house, you aren’t selling a commodity. You are selling a HOME, a place where a family will LIVE, raise their kids, have a refuge from the outside world. Even if you’re selling a tiny condo, you’re selling to someone who will bring their hopes and dreams of how their lives can be to living there.

Walking through empty rooms, or an empty house, is usually pretty depressing. It looks lonely, it doesn’t shout “this is your home, you will love living here.” So why would a buyer feel especially motivated to make an offer?

2. It’s hard to understand how large a room is when there’s nothing in it as a reference point.

Buyers can’t tell the difference between a 12 x 10 foot room and a 14 x 12 room if it’s empty. It looks about the same even though one is 40% bigger.

And when you’re dealing with a space that is 15 x 20 feet, a potential buyer has no idea what to do with it or how to arrange it. They might think it’s just big enough for a couch, 2 chairs and a coffee table, yet there’s room for so much more.

3. People can’t visualize how furniture will fit in an empty space and if they’re unsure, they don’t buy.

As shown in the living room/dining room example at the top of this article, it would have been hard to imagine how much furniture would fit in there or how it might be arranged. It’s a relatively small space and it was important to show buyers how it could be used.

4. When a room is empty prospective buyers focus on negative details instead of falling in love with the overall space.

Instead of looking at the flow of one room to another, they get bogged down in questions like:

• Is the drywall smooth?
• Will those bumps in the carpet come out?
• How come the closet doesn’t have a hanging bar yet?
• Why doesn’t that molding fit perfectly?
• How come the light switch is in the middle of the wall?

5. When a house or even a few rooms are empty prospective buyers can get distracted from looking at the house.

Instead of focusing on whether this is the home for them, they may be busy wondering: Is this a divorce? Have they left town? Are they selling because they have money problems? This train of thought will take them where you, as a vendor, don’t want them to go!

They’ll start thinking, “maybe I can put in a low ball offer since the seller might be desperate.” Clearly this is not the situation to get you the best price for the property. Why leave money on the table when a relatively minimal investment in home staging can make all the difference?

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. An entrepreneur for 20 years and author of several guides, Debra has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate and uses her expertise to train others worldwide.