6 expert property styling tips to help sell your home

Buying a home is a profound emotional experience: as much as we think we’re looking for a certain number of bedrooms and bathrooms, our impression of a property is often based on how it makes us feel.

Stylists and agents are well-versed in the art of making a home more alluring.

Here are some of the things they put into practice so their clients’ homes feel like places in which we want to linger – and places we want to buy.

1. Ensure the exterior is well-maintained

Kim McQueen, director of McQueen Real Estate in the Macedon Ranges, says one of the most important tips she gives vendors is to make their home look as if it’s easy to maintain.

“We don’t want a buyer walking into a home thinking … ‘Oh, there’s a lot of work to do here,’” says McQueen.

As well as trimming the hedges, mowing the lawn, weeding and edging gardens, she suggests that you “get some people in before you go to market to clean out all the gutters, give the house a really good Gurney … wash away all the dust, the dirt, the cobwebs. Just make it look as fresh as you can.

“Even paint jobs – it’s so worth the money in touching up your paint, making sure your windows are looking good paint-wise as well as clean, obviously. And make sure everything’s openable.”

“If the quality of the home is a bit run-down, they’re going to start thinking, ‘Hmm, gee, I wonder what the stumps are like’… ‘I wonder what’s hidden under here.’”

If your house feels well-maintained, potential buyers are more likely to trust you and assume you’ve taken good care of the place.

2. Turn on every light in the house

While mood lighting is suitable for dinner parties and natural light is great for photos, property stylist Sara Chamberlain from The Real Estate Stylist in Melbourne says homes should be awash with light on inspection days.

“Open all of your blinds, turn on all of your kitchen lights, turn on 20 lamps per room,” says Chamberlain. “Get as much sparkle into that space as you possibly can … It’s really going to help … It’s the only time I tell people to turn on their overhead lights.

Light-filled spaces, she explains, “feel physiologically safe and clean – nothing feels hidden or dark and damp”.

3. Amplify fresh smells

When it comes to inspection day, vendors might be tempted to load up on diffuser reeds or room sprays, bake a cake or, as Chamberlain cautions against, “invest $500 for a candle at Mecca” – but the experts agree the best scent is a fresh scent.

“We don’t want to ever feel like we’re trying to cover up smells,” says Chamberlain. “I think really nice fresh air coming through is better than anything … People’s sense of smell can vary quite significantly and what you might think is really beautiful and soft could be very overpowering for somebody.”

Meanwhile, McQueen says home owners often overlook animal smells because they get used to them.

“Get rid of the dog beds, take them outside, hide them in the shed … air your house out. Just make sure it smells fresh and clean. Because animal smell just stays in houses, and people hate it.”

Mowing the lawn or buying fresh flowers on inspection day can help the house to smell clean.

4. Hide clutter

Decluttering before open inspections is a no-brainer – but there are certain forms of clutter the experts often have to tell their clients to hide.

For Chamberlain, it’s dog toys and personal items like family photos or signed football jumpers.

“If things are just stuffed in everywhere, it gives the sense of ‘Gee, is there enough storage here? Obviously not.’”

McQueen points out that serious buyers open every single cupboard, and cupboards crammed with stuff make them feel the house lacks storage.

5. Use big furniture and artwork in big spaces

If you think a big couch will make a room feel smaller, think again.

“It’s absolutely the opposite,” says Chamberlain. “We see so many homes that are showcased with a tiny little couch and a small rug and a small coffee table, and potentially the home owner has the expectation that that’s creating a sense of scale and space – but it’s actually shrinking all the proportions of the home.

“So, the larger the rug, the bigger the room looks. The larger the sofa, within reason, the more bums on seats that you can fit there.

“If you’re trying to shift a four-bedroom home and you have a two-seater sofa, it’s always going to show up for you at the opens because the buyer cannot imagine themselves sitting with all those family members on a two-seater sofa.”

Enhancing homes with the right furniture and artwork also brings out what Chamberlain calls their “innate sparkle”.

Good stylists have access to a huge range of unique, high-end products they lend home owners for the duration of their home’s sale campaign (sometimes between $60,000 and $150,000 worth, according to Chamberlain).

6. Creating visual harmony

One tool stylists use to create visual harmony is “repeats” – usually in the form of a repeated colour in a room.

“It’s such a fantastic stylistic trick that when you have a colour in a room, using another product in that space where your eye can rest that is a similar colour will start to build up some harmony,” says Chamberlain. “So, an example of that is with timber. You can work with oak and you can repeat that with a coffee table, or a frame on a piece of artwork.”

This can be done simply by pulling all colourful items out of a room, right down to the coffee table books, and then gradually reintroducing a maximum of two or three colours into the space.

“You’ll find it will come together as a much more harmonious styling story than what you already just had there,” she says. “That’s the way that a stylist looks at a room.”

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