There’s nothing like flipping through the latest editions of House & Home, Better Homes and Gardens, Elle Decor, Style at Home, or House Beautiful to have you craving a new house or major renovations. Both are costly options!

Instead, try to redecorate and fall in love with your current home all over again. It’s amazing even simple redecorating changes can dampen your desire to move or renovate.

Redecorating your bathroom this spring doesn’t have to be expensive. A few well-chosen accessories, new towels and bath mat and a coordinating shower curtain will give you a whole new look without breaking the bank.

This bathroom was painted in neutral colors, the most versatile backdrop when you want to redecorate because it allows for a bunch of different looks.

I always like to start with the shower curtain, and take my cues for other items like the towels and bath mat, from there. Make sure you choose a color scheme you really love and bring in some fresh flowers or a plant.

The harder part for some people, but one that has a dramatic effect on your mood every day, is ditching the clutter. Start by getting rid of old toothbrushes, shampoos, prescriptions, cosmetics and other items you’re not using anymore. Then look at whether you can store remaining items in covered baskets.

Have you ever redecorated your bathroom without renovating and experienced how much that can lift your mood? Please share your comments below.

Learn more about how Six Elements can help you with home staging advice and decorating or redesign advice.

Debra Gould, President Six Elements Inc.

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.

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.

Bathrooms are such small rooms and so easy to update without spending much money. Whether you’re moving now or later, why not fluff your bathroom and make it a more enjoyable room? In the case of powder rooms, all you need is some art, a bud vase and a nice fluffy towel.

For more ideas for the bathroom, check out this $500 weekend bathroom makeover that totally transformed the space.

Need help with your own bathroom makeover project?

With a minimum two hour consultation in your home, I will give you new colors to consider and suggest many other changes that will transform your bathrooms and any room in your home at minimal cost. Contact me to learn more.

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

Debra Gould, President Six Elements Inc.

Internationally recognized Home Stager 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 is a home staging consultation with Debra.

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.

If you have a functioning home office in your house, the chances are it’s quite cluttered with papers, binders, “to do” piles, stacks on the floor under your desk and general chaos.

This might be how you work (no judgments here, I work that way myself), but it’s no way to sell your home. Besides, do you want a bunch of strangers looking at your real work, or potentially walking off with an important file?

For security sake, make sure you hide all important papers, clear your desk, shut down your computer and if it’s a laptop, take it with you!

Clutter was removed from surfaces and the floor. Here a large painting provides a stunning focal point for the end wall, pulls in the otherwise bright wall color and emphasizes the generous size of the room.

And for the sake of trying to sell your home, make sure you office looks bright, efficient and clutter free. Even it it’s a little less functional while your home is on the real estate market, the goal now is to sell your home as quickly as possible.

You want buyers to walk in and think, “What a great home office. I can totally see myself working in here!”

To accomplish this, it’s also a good idea to remove all personal diplomas, which distract buyers, and memo boards, which inevitably look cluttered no matter what’s on them. Replace these with a nice piece of art that ties in the wall color and provides a focal point. Make sure the size of the piece is proportional to the wall itself.

Need help with your home office?

If you’re need help redesigning your home office or staging any room in your home, contact us.

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.

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.

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.

I redesigned this kitchen with paint and accessories instead of ripping out cabinets and putting in new counters. It was even featured in Woman's Day Magazine! Runner on the counter is from the Debra Gould Home Collection

Many families don’t have tens of thousands to spend on a new kitchen, or they don’t want to live through the significant inconvenience of ripping out this critical room and waiting for it to be rebuilt from scratch.

I did it once on my second property and it was a nightmare. The day after I moved in with my toddler I had the kitchen ripped out so that I’d have better cupboard space and a spot for a dishwasher. It took over two months to complete and in the meantime we lived in a construction zone with all the dust, noise and danger that entails.

I managed to set up the fridge, microwave and toaster oven in the living room, but every time I turned on the microwave we’d blow a fuse. Let’s just say it was one of THE most stressful periods of my life. From then on I vowed to never buy a house that didn’t already have a dishwasher built in or a space that I could use a portable one.

If your biggest problem is that your kitchen is just plain ugly, before you go spending tens of thousands of dollars tearing out cabinets and counters, putting in expensive tiles and back splashes, etc., consider the magic that can be achieved with well chosen paint and accessories! You’ll be amazed at the new look you can get with a cheap kitchen makeover.

Need help with your own kitchen makeover project?

With a two to three hour consultation in your home, I will give you new colors to consider and suggest many other changes that will transform your kitchen at minimal cost. Contact me to learn more.

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

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.