A sale ready home doesn’t just mean tidying up and slapping on some fresh paint.
When you think about selling your home, you start thinking about gaining the best possible sale price. Most home buyers are looking to upgrade so you may need to make your home look as large and as spacious as possible. How can you do this?
Well, it largely depends on the style of home and furniture you own. Whether it’s a smallish cottage or a larger gentleman’s bungalow, there are options for styling a sale ready home. Maybe you need to add more light, create better flow from positioning the furniture, or perhaps getting rid of large pieces of furniture altogether.
So let’s look at the best ideas for making your smaller home look more grand and welcoming.
Sale Ready Home : Light It Up
It’s possible that your home looks small because it’s too dark. If your home is too dark, there will be shadows cast on furniture and in corners. This pushes the room in, making it feel cramped and cluttered. To fix this issue, opt for some new light fixtures. Spotlights remain popular because they highlight art works, displays, and places of interest in the room. They bring a room to life if installed correctly. They can also be turned away from areas you wish to minimise.
A cheaper option would be to add some lamps around the rooms in your home. Be careful with this idea, though. Certain lamps will just create more shadow, leading to the opposite effect. Have a look at lamps that spread light evenly across the room and give your home a warm presence.
Alternatively, you may want to consider changing the colours of the room. A basic idea would be to paint the rooms winter white or cream. These shades naturally bounce light around the room, making it look a lot larger. The emptiness of the colour also creates the feeling of an open space.
Be careful with white, though, as if it’s too white it will appear cold. It’s better to add a tiny amount of black to create a very subtle grey or go for a winter white.
Sale Ready Home : Declutter
We’ve talked about decluttering before. By decluttering you can make your room look stylish and lived in without overcrowding the area. For instance, you may want to think about putting some of your furniture in storage. Storage units are available for people in the midst of moving who want to create the right impression in their home. But you have to be careful that you don’t remove too many items. Otherwise, you can be left with an area that looks like the owner is desperate to move out.
If you only have a small area to work with, try layering to make it look larger. For instance, you can have a carpet with a rug and a table on top of it. This gives the impression of a room that has more depth.
Use glass tables – coffee table, side table, dining table – that are see-through to give the feeling of space. When you can see through an object the space appears bigger.
Similarly, furniture with legs, such as a sofa or bed that is lifted off the floor, will give the illusion of more space. So take the valance (bed skirt or dust ruffle) off and clean up under the bed to make a bedroom look more spacious.
Sale Ready Home : Furniture Positioning
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that furniture plastered against the walls is going to make a room look bigger. It won’t. Create better traffic flow from room to room by positioning furniture relative to where people walk. This alone will create a more visually pleasant room. And if you have too much furniture, get rid of it into storage.
Sale Ready Home : Patterns And Styles
Finally, certain patterns and designs can alter the perception of a room. Horizontal patterns can make a room look smaller whereas vertical lines produce the opposite effect. For example, vertically striped wallpaper will make a ceiling look higher. Consider this when you are choosing the furniture for the room as well as accessories such as curtains.
If you are interested in ideas like this, speak to an interior designer or home stylist. They will be able to help you plan a room that looks both large and open.
Hopefully, you’ll have found this advice useful for decorating your home and readying it for sale. However, we’d love to hear your ideas. Please leave a comment so other readers can benefit from your experience.
