5 Home Staging Secrets to Help your Home Sell
- Jenny Gericke
- Aug 28, 2018
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 27, 2018
Most people have a misguided perception of home staging. They think its just for those sad, desperate homes left behind due to a divorce or financial trouble. But former Real Estate Agent and now Home Stager and Home Staging Coach, Marianne Cherico would disagree. She says that when it comes to staging your home for sale, it's really all about marketing and packaging your home to get the best return on your investment.

For today's Inside Design, I spoke with Marianne Cherico, who's been in real estate sales and marketing as well as home staging for the past few decades. She walked me through some of her top tips for getting your house ready to sell as well as staging it to appeal to your potential buyers. Below are some of the things Marianne does as a professional home stager that you can do too!
5 Home Staging Secrets to Help your Home Sell:
Think about your home from the buyer's perspective

When you first get your house ready to sell, you want to think about who is going to be buying it. If you have a three-bedroom house in a good school district, decorate it to appeal to families. If you have a condo in the city, decorate it to appeal to a young couple or bachelor who may like to be in the mix of things.
Marianne noted that when a potential buyer comes to view your home, they only spend a few minutes in each room. So you really want to engage buyers emotionally the minute they walk in a room. This may mean rearranging your furniture so potential buyers see a beautifully made bed instead of a dresser when they walk in the bedroom. Home staging is all about selling the dream. You are trying to help your potential buyers envision themselves and their furniture in the space.
Update your home's paint colors
Updating your home's paint colors proves to give you the biggest return on your investment. As mentioned above, Marianne cautions to think about your potential buyer first when choosing paint colors. Don't just go with the latest trends. Think about what the buyers in your area think is in now.
In general, you should choose neutrals as the backdrop for each space and then add in warm pops of color. Neutral colors will help make the rooms look big and show off their best assets. You can also think about maximizing beautiful assets of the home and minimizing undesirables. Got lots of wood trim that won't appeal to younger, more modern homebuyers? Paint it!
Small changes in the Kitchen are really important

Kitchens and bathrooms are two really important rooms to potential buyers. If yours is looking a little outdated, some small changes can make a huge impact. Here's where paint comes in again! Rather than tackling a renovation or complete gut job, Marianne says you can update your appliances to give a kitchen a more modern look. Painting the kitchen cabinets or even updating the fixtures, such as the faucets, can help revitalize or refresh the space. If that's too much of a job to tackle, think about simply replacing your cabinet hardware and updating the lighting.
The hard truth is that sometimes to sell your home you have to put a little money into it first. Marianne says that Home Stagers are really marketers first. They are trying to create as little resistance as possible in potential buyer's minds by updating your home. That will give you the best return on your investment.
De-personalize and don't overdecorate
Marianne always saw herself as more of a Decorator than an Interior Designer. Still, she says that Home Staging is different than decorating. Decorating is more personal. When getting your home ready to sell, you should create visual units or vignettes that draw the buyer in. Don't just hang artwork where a nail already exists! Hang art with purpose over a desk or rearrange a furniture and lamp to create a small reading nook.
Make sure to remove family photos and replace them with art. But keep it simple. Less is more!

Work with a Professional Home Stager
Home staging doesn't mean you have to move all your furniture out and let someone else come in and style your space. There are a lot of options from consultations to working with a Professional Stager to Virtual Staging. For example, Marianne offers home staging consultations. During these sessions, she helps homeowners with ideas to neutralize, style, and stage their home. She gives them every idea so they can do it themselves. From there, the homeowner can decide if they want to work with her further on staging a few rooms. If you're looking for a home stager or home staging consultation, you can usually get a recommendation through a local real estate agent.
If neither of those is a cost-effective option, you can also look into the new trend of virtual home staging. Marianne noted that the first showing of your house is the one online when a potential buyer views your home's pictures. So it's very important that your home gives a good first impression. Virtual staging gives your home this opportunity by staging the pictures with digitally-rendered furniture and art. You can then reference the pictures again when the buyer comes in person to see the home. This helps them envision the space further.
Getting your home ready to sell doesn't simply mean cleaning and decluttering. It means thinking from the perspective of your future buyer. You may love those blue walls but your prospective buyer may not. With some of the home staging tips above, you can market your home better. Start by doing a walk through of each space in your home and criticize it from a potential buyer's perspective. Then decide what changes are feasible and go make them! This will help you get your house ready to sell!

Marianne Cherico has 27 years real estate sales and marketing experience. She has owned her Staging Company since 2005. In 2013, she left real estate to help empower other business women to create the life and business that they dream of. While she still does home staging and design/decorating, she also offers 1-on-1 coaching as well as group coaching.
Thank you Marianne for sharing your wisdom and expertise with us today!
If you are interested in home staging as a career and in need of a good home staging training program, I would recommend Marianne's group coaching program that is starting July 2! Read more about her Group Coaching Program and visit Marianne's coaching website as well as her private Facebook group for Home Stagers and Designers!
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