In one of the 13 episodes of this new show, home staging expert Debra Gould takes Ambrose under her wing to teach him about how to stage a home. They visited three supposedly staged houses just before Christmas and Debra explained what was done right and what was wrong in each one.

More about the upcoming episode of Debra Gould on HGTV

Many builders have found that staging inventory homes helps buyers visualize living there. Plus, when buyers walk into a furnished room, they're looking at how the house lives instead of nitpicking where the light fixtures are located. Debra Gould, a home staging trainer known as The Staging Diva, says that builders can achieve the goals of staging without spending a fortune, just by paying attention to some basic principles.

When you're staging, take a minimalist approach to the amount of furniture you put in the house. You need a focal point in each room, but the idea is to show off the house, not sell knickknacks and linens.

“You don't need to cram it with as much stuff as someone who is living there,” she says. “You don't want it to feel vacant, but you don't need as much seating as you would normally have in a home. … Set up little scenarios where people can see themselves. If you have an empty corner, make it a little reading corner. If there's an eat-in kitchen, put a table there, but you don't need to set the table.”

Where you do want to go a bit over the top is the master suite.

“Bedrooms are important,” Gould says. “Dress the bed really well. I hate going to houses that are half a million dollars and the bed has nothing on it. If you go to a bedding store, see how the beds are dressed. That's what you want.”

The master bath can be warmed up with a stack of nice, fluffy towels. Gould says her idea of staging a bathroom is “what a bathroom in a Four Seasons hotel looks like before you unpack all your junk.” That means it's sparkling clean with decorative soaps, a shower curtain if it's not an enclosed stall, art on the walls, and, yes, toilet paper.

In a family neighborhood, make sure one of the bedrooms is staged as a child's room. “It doesn't take much to create that ambiance—one twin bed, one table, a lamp, some stuffed animals, and kid bedding,” she says. If you're selling to young families, show a nursery. “It gets Mom all excited,” Gould says.

Read the whole feature story

Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses in 2006.

This Winter 2008 Buyer's Guide is on magazine racks until January 29/08.

More about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program

The CBC switchboard lit up for an hour as home staging expert Debra Gould answered questions from homeowners about what they should do to decorate or renovate their homes for resale.

Excerpt: Debra Gould, known as The Staging Diva, specializes in finessing clients' houses so they look their best for the real estate market. But Gould's tips work just as well if you're in the mood for a kitchen makeover. Chuck that clutter If you use your food processor only once a month, purge your cabinets of unwanted items to make more room inside for it and other countertop appliances you rarely use.

Colour Your World

Cabinets, drawers, walls, even a laminate backsplash and countertop can be re-painted (use melamine paint for laminate) to give your kitchen a whole new look.

Pull Together

Replace cabinet knobs and drawer pulls . . .

Joe White interviewed home staging expert Debra Gould about why home staging is important in a slower real estate market and how homeowners can find a home stager to help decorate their homes to sell more quickly and at a higher price.

Debra also explained why some real estate agents are reluctant to recommend home staging even when it would be in their client's best interest.

Buying a new home or condo means buying a dream. Part of that dream is the life we envision ourselves having in our new home. A life inspired by magazines and home decorating television shows.

In real life, unfortunately, it’s difficult to keep up that "new home" look. Professional home stagers, the experts who create ideal home suites and get homes ready for sale, can offer some valuable tips about keeping that "model suite" look in your home. These tips are also helpful for special occasions when you want to impress visitors.

Read the full story

Debra Gould is the only person teaching the business of home staging who combines an MBA in marketing, almost 20 years experience as an entrepreneur and the proven track record of actually growing a successful home staging business herself from scratch— not as a sideline to a real estate practice, but as a stand alone and profitable home-based business. Debra knows from first-hand experience what it takes to get a home staging business off the ground with a shoe string budget, and she knows how to attract home staging clients as proven by the hundreds of satisfied clients she’s served.

Putting up a 'for sale' sign turns the spotlight on your home. Experts share ways to pare down, spruce, up, and seal a good deal.

These days, you have to work hard to make your house stand out, or it might sit on the market for months. If you're selling, you want to captivate buyers so you can sell quickly and for as much money as possible. But there's a lot to do to get a house ready for the market.

"Your home has to be cleaner for a showing than you would normally require it to be just to live in it," says Debra Gould, Toronto-based creator of The Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. It communicates care and maintenance of the whole house."

Leave the cost-benefit analysis to the number crunchers and consider this: Even a minor bathroom remodel can boost your personal satisfaction index a gazillion percent. What are you waiting for?

Researchers at Remodeling magazine, have long found that remodeling a bathroom gives homeowners one of the highest value-vs.-cost ratios of all home-improvement projects.

Before they get too carried away with plans for a new bathroom, designers are quick to warn their clients that the cost of redoing this small space can quickly spiral upward.

Less than $1,000

Toronto-based interior design expert Debra Gould, who is also known as The Staging Diva, boasts that she can give a bathroom a complete makeover for $500.

In fact, by just changing towels (color-coordinated, of course), a new shower curtain, adding flowers and a fresh coat of paint, she says she can even create a new bathroom in a single day.

"Many bathrooms look ugly or tired, but the expensive items are basically there," she says. "You just need to add the details."

Experts agree that one of the easiest ways to create a stylish bathroom is with coordinated metal finishes. Faucets vary widely in price, but many attractive ones fall below $200 at any nearby hardware store. Once you select a style, look for matching accessories with the same finish: towel bars, soap dishes, knobs, faucets and even decorative pieces.

Other simple solutions that complete the picture include changing outdated light fixtures. For some reason, new lighting isn’t one of the top jobs on most consumers’ remodeling To-Do lists. Gould reports that many homeowners she’s worked with have stuck with the same Hollywood-style rack lighting that once was the pinnacle of style and a staple in countless suburban cookie-cutter homes. She suggests swapping them for halogen lights, which more closely resemble natural sunlight.

Entrepreneur Magazine identified home staging as one of the hottest growth businesses in 2006.

More about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program

Home staging expert Debra Gould provides her tips for Hiring a Home Stager.

Excerpts from Canadian House & Home Magazine:

Staging is an unregulated field, so beware of anyone claiming to have "accreditation".

According to Debra Gould of Toronto-based Six Elements, an average three-bedroom empty home can be staged for about $6,000, which will boost the selling price by $10,000 to $70,000.

Gould says a staging expert should prepare your home for your target market, transforming it into a property that will appeal to the greatest number of potential buyers. So don't take suggestions personally.

To find a stager, ask your real estate agent or friends for referrals. Or try the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

By: Jen Wareham

Call it Debra Gould's $90,000 touch. That's about how much the 47-year-old made getting out of the Toronto real estate market— and what she made when she got back in four years later.

Her first windfall came in 1998 when the then-marketing consultant decided to downsize so that she could pursue a new career as an artist. She'd been in her three-bedroom detached Beach home for almost two years, during which time she'd given the tired space a rejuvenating lift with new lighting, some paint and a modest kichen reno.

With her marketing background and her eye for decor, she knew how to style the home to show it at its best, rearranging furniture and hanging art for added effect. Her efforts paid off: the house sold for almost $90,000 more than she had paid two years earlier.

Four years— and three cities— later, Gould was eyeing a return to Toronto. But it was 2002 and the market had changed, with prices higher and bargains tougher to find. . . . she started tracking homes in her price rnage and watching what they sold for. As her knowledge-base grew, so did her abilitiy to spot a good deal. It wasn't long before something caught her eye.

. . . The three-bedroom semi was listed at $259,000, when others like it were going on the market for $299,900 and selling, she says, at around $310,000. . . . Within 24 hours, Gould was in Toronto at the agent open-house with an inspector in tow. . . .

Read Debra Gould's full real estate success story at TorontoLife.com

The Sunday Real Estate section features Home Staging expert Debra Gould's top home staging tips in the article "Stage Presence: Let pro make your house more inviting to buyers" by Chris Wadsworth.

The article quoted several of these home staging tips.

Story by Karen Bridson-Boyczuk
Photography by Jill Kitchener

Debra Gould is The Staging Diva

They are known as "fluffers."

They are the creative minds realtors depend on in their effort to make top dollar on the sale of a home. With a bit of paint, a few selected touches, an imaginative eye and a lot of elbow grease, the work of these "home stagers," as they are more commonly known, can quite dramatically increase the selling price of a home. . . .

Staging Diva Debra Gould, says homeowners without any plans for selling can make drastic improvements to the look of their homes simply by following a few 'home fluffing' techniques.

"So often my clients say, 'wow, and to think, (my house) could have looked like this for the last five years," says Gould, president of Six Elements Inc. (www.stagingdiva.com).

Gould says there are some very basic steps people can take to 'fluff' their homes for themselves.

"The biggest problem I see in people's homes is inadequate lighting," she says. "Many people live in very dark, dingy homes and they don't even know it." . . .

Beyond small clutter items, many homes have too much furniture for the size of the rooms, she says. . . .

"So it's important to take a look at how else the furniture can be arranged in a room," she says. "Often people will say, 'oh, it never occurred to me to put that there.' . . .

Mismatched bedding and towels are another pet peeve of Gould's. . . . "I'm always buying sheets and duvets and towels to go into the homes I stage," she says. "It gives you a nice focal point and can make such a huge difference to the way a room looks." . . .

"If you've got a basement filled with things you are planning to fix one day, just get rid of them. People feel liberated when they knock those things off of their to-do lists. It's very freeing." . . .

Gould has staged hundreds of homes, ranging in price from $190,000 to $1.5 million. . . .

Read full story "Debra Gould is The Staging Diva"

Home Staging expert Debra Gould is interviewed live by Ann-Marie Mediwake on Global TV Morning News.

The story focussed on why home staging is important even in a hot real estate market and featured before and after photos of many of Debra Gould's home staging projects for her company Six Elements Inc.

Read more about Six Elements home staging.

Style at Home Magazine,
June 2006
"Her Faves"

Excerpt from Style at Home Magazine:

"Home staging expert Debra Gould, a.k.a. The Staging Diva of Six Elements (sixelements.com, stagingdiva.com), shares two books that will help you look at your home in a new way.

What Color is Your Slipcover? How Discovering Your Design Personality Can Help You Create The Home Of Your Dreams by Denny Daikeler

I decorate homes for clients who believe they can't make their current house work, so they decide to sell. The irony is once I've redecorated, my clients see what they could have enjoyed all along. What Color is Your Slipcover? is for anyone whose home isn't the sanctuary they're looking for. Borrowing from What Color is Your Parachute?, this book helps you define your design personality and create an action plan."

More about What Color is Your Slipcover

The Home Zone: Making the Most of Your Living Space by Caroline Clifton-Mogg

Top interiors writers and hundreds of inspirational photos of real homes guide readers through five popluar decorating styles, and discuss how to work with color, lighting, flooring, window treatments and soft furnishings. I say 'real homes; because unlike in some books, these ones look lived in. You'll learn about space planning, and issues specific to each area, from choosing the right bathroom faucet to picking a kitchen layout that works."

More about The Home Zone

Excerpt:

To sell a house she owns more quickly, Debra Gould, president of Six Elements Inc., a company in Toronto that specializes in making for-sale properties more attractive, first upgrades the light fixtures and uses higher-wattage bulbs. Brightly lit rooms appear bigger and more inviting, she says, but she also installs dimmers to be able to create mood lighting. . . .

Read the rest of the story about home staging expert Debra Gould in The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Story by Lydia Dumyn | Photos by Debra Gould

Excerpt from Home and Decor Magazine:

From the outside in, home staging expert Debra Gould of Six Elements Inc. shows how to make your home more saleable through some simple cosmetic changes that make all the difference.

Some say the first impression is the only impression that counts... when you're trying to sell your home, it's true. Home-staging expert Debra Gould, also known as "The Staging Diva," of Six Elements Inc. has bought six of her own homes and staged hundreds of others for clients.

Gould points out that when a real estate agent has eight homes to show prospective purchasers in a day, many buyers will decide from the car parked in the driveway whether they even want to bother seeing a listing. This is one of the reasons first impressions, or curb appeal, is so critical.

Gould staged the front of this Beach-area semi-detached home. "Your home's curb appeal can be enhanced tremendously by removing the storm door, and replacing the front door, hardware, address sign and lighting," says Gould - minor changes that can mean the difference between a prospective buyer crossing your threshold or passing your home entirley without so much as a second look. . . . "

Learn more about Home and Decor Magazine

Reader's Digest (Canada), June 2005 - "Your Home is a Stage"
Staging Diva Debra Gould is featured in a full page story opening the RD Living Section

Excerpt:
"When house hunting, people like to imagine they can look past ugly decor or empty rooms to see potential, but usually they can't! That's why sellers might want to 'repackage' their house to appeal to potential buyers.

Enter professional home stager Debra Gould, president of Six Elements Inc. She rearranges rooms, chooses paint colors, stores superfluous items and even brings in rental furniture. The results can be dramatic: After Gould staged a home that had sat on the market without an offer for six weeks, the owner received three offers within days and sold at 98% of the asking price. Her fee was modest when you consider that the owner was going to drop the listing price by $50,000 but called Gould first.

What does Gould look for?..."

Coldwell Banker Realty tracked 2,772 properties, ranging in price from $229,000 (U.S.) to $4.8 million, in eight major U.S. cities.

It found that while the average home was on the market for nearly 31 days, the typical staged home sold in just under 14 days.

And while the average home sold for a mere 1.6% over the seller's asking price, the staged homes went for a hefty 6.3% more.

MoneySense Magazine, April/May 2005

"Winning the Real Estate War: Home Stagers reveal 10 secrets to getting the most for your home"

Cover story by Julie Cazzin

Excerpt:
"Home stagers perform their magic by playing up the best features of your house and minimizing the worst.... Debra Gould, who owns the Six Elements Home Staging firm in Toronto, says it's important to avoid planting negative associations in buyers' minds.... gives the example of an open house she attended where the owner had left all the garbage and recycling bins at the top of the long and steep flight of steps leading up to the house.... she advised the agent to have the homeowner tuck the bins away behind the house rather than drawing attention to the major inconvenience of not having a place to store them at sidewalk level...

... Home Stager Gould recommends you pay special attention to the furnace room since every home buyer wonders what shape the furnace is in. "If the furnace looks clean, it looks newer," says Gould. That goes for the fuse box and electrical panel too.

... A couple of planters on your front porch, a vase of flowers on your dining room table, even a simple rose in a bud vase can warm up a room. This is where you can let some of your creativity show through. "You want to get away form making rooms feel dull and sterile," says the home stager Gould. "Flowers and plants are good for that." Candles help too."

Excerpt:

"Home Stager Debra Gould, president of Toronto-based Six Elements gives insider house fluffing tips:

• Boost 'curb appeal' with landscaping, potted plants, painting the porch or just mowing the lawn.
  
  
• Wonky cabinets, loose tiles, damaged caulking, dripping taps— fix them all! 'These repairs make people feel the house has been well cared for,' says Gould.
  
  
• Get rid of all your junk or rent a storage locker. Buyers who find clutter in the closets will think the house lacks space.
  
  
• Small touches count, so leave fresh flowers, quiet music and all the lights on before showings. 'People shop with logic, but buy on emotion,' explains Gould.
  
  
• Bring in a professional house fluffer if your impatient agent is recommending a price cut. 'At minimum, house fluffing should make a $10,000 difference, so it's worth it,' she says."

Cover Story:

"Let's Make a Deal! How to sell your first house without losing your shirts— or your minds" by David Leach

by Laura Byrne Paquet

Excerpt:

"... you can buy unique products made by Canadian artisans... Check out the quirky 'treasure chests' decorated with an animal-print pattern by Debra Gould."

Woman's Day Specials Walls, Windows & Floors

"At Home with Debra Gould: a Toronto designer and artist infuses her home with her own colorful graphics"

Written by: Bernadette Baczynski
Photos by: Robin Stubbert
Styling by: Debra Gould

Excerpt:

Several years ago, Debra Gould took her own best advice: "I believe we all have a real desire to express ourselves," she says. "And what better place to start than in our own homes."

Debra, who had been a successful marketing consultant for 15 years, was feeling creatively constrained. So, she took a year's sabbatical and moved to a remote island in Canada. There, she decided to use her business degree and arts training to turn her passion for color and pattern into a thriving Toronto-based business, Six Elements which markets her Debra Gould Home Collection of art and accessories.

When she returned to Toronto, Debra, always keeping an eye out for a challenging fixer-upper, looked for "the ugliest house in the best location." Happily, she found it. "Structurally, it's great," she says. "It was just tired, dark and in need of help."

Of all the houses she's lived in— this is her sixth in 12 years— Debra says this semi detached, 1930s-era house best reflects her personality. "As soon as you come to the front door, you know it's not an overly serious place," she adds. The tiny foyer leads to a narrow stairway, which Debra stamped, stenciled and painted two shades of chartreuse.

Since the house was basically sound, Debra opted for inexpensive, cosmetic updates...

"Selling Your Home? Set the stage for a quick sale"

Written by: Kathy Sena

All photography for the story supplied by Six Elements showing before and after photos of a Montreal duplex home staged by Debra Gould. The property sold within days for $30,000 above agents' estimated selling price.

Debra Gould appeared on "The Source" on Toronto1 TV in a special segment on Decorating for Romance.

The show will be re-broadcast throughout 2005.

Written by: Gabrielle Bauer
Photos by: Virginia MacDonald

Looking back, Summerhill muses that "a lot of people would resist staging because it does require you to depersonalize. But it helped us to think that we had bought a new home and were now just custodians of our old house. Our object was to sell quickly, and that we certainly accomplished."

Protecting your equity when it is time to sell
How to get top dollar: Look at your house as if you were a buyer looking for flaws

Currently, the resale market in Canada -- and especially in Toronto and Vancouver and their surrounding areas -- is hot. On average, about 382,000 homes are sold through national real estate multiple listing services every year. Add in increasing "fsbo" (for sale by owner) sales and that figure probably exceeds 400,000.

...Advice on home sale preparation is everywhere...For the most part, recommendations encompass three main concepts: fantasize, fix and fluff. . . .

Debra Gould, of Toronto's Six Elements Inc., has these tips for successful house fluffing:

- Consider the curb appeal. At minimum, clean up the yard, cut the grass and sweep the porch and entrances. Clean all surfaces.

- Get rid of clutter. Cull those possessions, most of which you really don't want anyway. Whittle the contents of closets and cupboards down to the essentials. Consider storing some stuff off-site.

- Watch where the eye goes. In every corridor and room, see where your eye is drawn. If it is to flaws such as peeling wallpaper or nail holes in a wall, repair them. If it is not fixable but is still annoying, put something else, such as flowers, in a prominent spot to draw the eye away.

- Clean, clean and clean again. Hire a professional service to come in and deep clean everything, then spend 30 minutes or so a day maintaining it. If you want it to look like it is well cared for, your home should sparkle.

- Let in some air and light. Open all windows to clear out the must. Consider placing air-freshening material in strategic spots. Keep your home bright, even if you like it moody. Dimly lit rooms tend to look small and dingy. You might have to get better lighting or paint dark rooms a lighter shade.

- Consider adding fresh flowers and continual background music. They appeal to the senses and make the home a pleasant place to be in.

© Copyright 2003 National Post

And the venerable concept, though now rejigged and revamped to suit 21st century sensibilities, is intact and thriving... Opting for the unique and shunning "off the rack" sameness, locals are assigning handmade items to mundane tasks. And artists are adding a dollop of flair to the functionality. The result is art that performs to raves in either realm.

Her floorcloths, wall hangings and place mats have jazzed up a slew of homes in the area and far afield.

...As color conscious as Matisse, Gould "coordinates but doesn't match" her clients' interior tones. "I'm passionate about color and it's the starting point for all my work," she says. "The clients and I develop a palette and the design flows from there."