It’s important that living, dining and family rooms feel warm and inviting— whether you’re trying to sell your home or decorating it to live in.

Here a tiny dining room, that was barely more than a hallway from the front of the house to the kitchen in the back was, given a dramatic face lift.

Old wood chairs were re-painted and an inexpensive wrought iron Ikea fixture is dressed up with beaded red shades.

As one might expect in a home from the early 1900s, the old plaster walls were less than smooth. To visually minimize this issue and save money, the walls were repainted and then a wash of a second deeper color mixed with glaze was added over top. This textured look gave depth to the room while making the bumpy walls no longer an issue.

To complete this unique look, original art and a table runner from the Debra Gould Home Collection were added.

Design and color expert Debra Gould is president of Six Elements Inc. She creates environments that are warm and welcoming while reflecting the spirit of the people living there.

When it’s time to put the house you are living in onto the real estate market, it becomes a product. Rather than suggesting all new furniture in a resale home, a good home stager will try and work with what you already have in new and better ways when staging your home.

Sometimes though, it’s necessary to bring in rental furniture to add to what you already have, or to replace furniture that’s not appropriate to the purpose of the room, or the target market of your home.

For example, I staged a million dollar home that had inexpensive Ikea furniture in the living room. I moved this down to the basement where it was more suited to a family room. Then I brought in rental furniture to stage the living room to be more in keeping with what the buyer of a million dollar property would expect.

Below is an example of combining what my client already owned with rental furniture that I brought in just before the house went on the real estate market.

Need help with your staging or decorating project?

With a minimum two hour consultation in your home, we will tell you everything that needs to be done in your house before you put it on the real estate market (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.

If you’re outside the Toronto area, I can still help you personally by phone working from photos you email me. Learn more about this virtual staging service.

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.

Not everyone lives in a home the way they would like others to see it when it’s time to sell. My clients realize that in order to sell their homes more quickly and for more money they have to turn it into a product that will appeal to potential buyers.

In this house the family room had become a dumping ground for clutter that ranged from video games to kid’s toys and a myriad of family photos of all shapes and sizes crowding the fireplace mantel. Fine for living but not for selling!

To showcase how the room could be used as an eat in area, I brought in rental furniture and removed all the personal clutter that was distracting and made the area feel crowded. While the after shot would be a bit sparse for living, it does allow a buyer to take in the room without distracting them with details.

The Results

This home sold for $21,000 over asking within days.

Debra Gould, President Six Elements Inc.

Home staging expert Debra Gould will bring in rental furniture and accessories where necessary to create the right look for a home going on the real estate market. Contact us to learn more about how Debra can help you.

I’ve staged hundreds of homes and discovered that many people don’t use their dining rooms as such. For some families it’s a big empty space filled with toys, for others, especially when the dining room and living room are one, it becomes one big living room with the family eating in the kitchen.

Not having a dining room is fine for how you might choose to live in your home. But when it’s time to sell you need to re-think how you’re showing the use or purpose of each room.

Prospective buyers have a startling lack of imagination and if you don’t show a dining room as such, they’ll be thinking there isn’t one. Part of the problem is that most buyers see 6 or 8 homes in a day and whip through them pretty fast. In fact, I compared house hunting to speed dating in a recent article.

Need help with your staging 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) before you put your house on the real estate market. Contact us to learn more.

If you’re outside the Toronto area, I can still help you personally by phone working from photos you email me. Learn more about this virtual staging service.

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.

The house sold in days for $30,000 over asking. Three other houses on the street were available for sale before this home came on the market, and they were still for sale weeks after this one sold. Not providing the finishing touches leaves a significant amount of money on the table when it's time to sell. Everything in this photo was added during a Home Staging by Six Elements Inc.

Attention Builders, Renovators and home owners with empty rooms! Home Staging can easily increase the selling price of your empty home by $20,000 to $50,000 with minimal investment.

Decorating your house to sell, also called Home Staging, House Staging, Real Estate Staging or House Fluffing, will help you sell more quickly and as a builder or renovator, you know time is money!

Tempted to leave a room or a home empty?

If you’ve done the expensive and time-consuming job of renovating, don’t decide to save money when it comes to furnishings!

It’s hard to stay motivated to the bitter end when you’ve gone through expensive renovations, suffered with delays, gone over your budget. It can be tempting to say, “it’s good enough, the paint’s dry let’s put it on the market as is!”

This is short sighted and can cost you a bundle!

It’s relatively inexpensive to rent anything you need, and these finishing touches help ensure you make the profit you deserve for all those costly renovations.

Imagine it’s the Academy Awards. A big star is wearing a fabulous designer gown so she decides she doesn’t need to get her hair done. Does everyone talk about the fabulous gown? Of course not, all they can remember is that terrible hair!

Or imagine a fine painting stuck in a dollar store frame. Does the painting have the same appeal as it would if it had gone to a professional framer? No, suddenly it looks like it must be a cheap painting instead of the wonderful work of art that it is.

Conversely, have you ever taken one of your 4 year old’s paintings and had it framed? What a difference compared to how it looked when you had it stuck on the fridge with a magnet!

Why does one T-shirt sell for $15 and another for $100? They’re both 100% cotton and they’re probably both made in a country where workers make pennies. The hundred dollar version has a big name on the label, it’s sold in a fine boutique.

It’s all about context and packaging… home staging is about packaging a home to show off its best features and downplay the flaws. Home staging is about romancing the buyer, putting them in the mood to make an emotional connection with a house!

There are at least 5 reasons why it’s a bad idea to try and sell an empty house or a house with many empty rooms. And they all lead to one conclusion, the prospective buyer will be tempted to make a lower offer if they even make one at all!

Don’t have the energy to do it yourself, or not sure where to start?

Done right, home staging / house fluffing provides an excellent return on investment — helping you sell your home more quickly and for more money. Contact Six Elements for help. We can source everything you need to get your empty property or empty rooms decorated to sell on the real estate market.

CNN Money interviewed Home Staging expert Debra Gould on how Home Staging, or Real Estate Merchandising as it’s also called, is a great strategy in a slowing real estate market.

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.

A common problem I run into when people stage their own homes is that they’ve read that need to depersonalize and declutter. This is good advice, but when taken to the extreme you can end up with a bland room that doesn’t romance prospective home buyers the way it could. Even subtle changes can bring back the warmth.

I found two antique leather suitcases stored in the garage. We gave them a polish and stacked them to serve as a coffee table. By adding flowers to the table and picking up the same red in accent cushions on the sofa, the room looks more pulled together and more inviting. Replacing the larger art in the corner with two smaller pieces made that area feel less crowded and gave us a much needed piece for an empty wall in another room.

Debra Gould, President Six Elements Inc.

Home staging expert Debra Gould uses much of what a client already has in new ways when decorating a house for the real estate market. This keeps the costs down when staging a house to sell. Contact us to learn more about how Debra can help you.

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.