Here at Dwell House our team has just finished our latest home staging project in Grants Pass and it was a beautiful triumph! Each home is different, so each staging venture takes on its own life and personality as we wind our way through the design process and implementation. This latest project was a real treat for me because I was able to see each step of the staging process unfold. Every layer added to the overall end product that turned out to be a benchmark example of what home staging can do to bring out a home’s potential. It was truly a stunning result!

We shared so many WOW moments during the transformation that I feel that I MUST share what we did to turn this lackluster listing into a showstopper.

Here in Southern Oregon, we offer home staging services to take the load off of you, but for anyone looking to DIY stage their own home or for anyone needing convincing as to why home staging works, read on!

What We Did

#1 We Cleaned Up and Painted

I’m going to go ahead and put these activities into one category since they are by default the first, easiest and cheapest things to do before putting your house on the market. These are the tasks that you can do yourself for minimal costs, but you can also hire someone else to do the work and it won’t break the bank. We always start with cleaning, painting and getting any carpets cleaned or driveways, etc power washed in order to spruce things up from the get-go.

The carpets, to put it politely, were horrendous. The moment I saw them I thought there was no way a buyer would look twice at this home. They. Were. Bad.  The scope was out of our repertoire, so we hired a professional carpet company to do what they do best and OMG did they do a fabulous job! Hats off to Everclear Professional Cleaning for doing such a great job! Check out the before and after video…

On top of the carpet cleaning, we had the house professionally cleaned. The cleaning crew came in and scrubbed everything to a shine and the light wood floors were gleaming afterwards!

Next we painted some of the bedrooms and an accent wall to bring it all back to neutral. The blazing pink and blue bedrooms may have been too much for some potential buyers who would choose to run away rather than deal with a painting project.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “What’s the big deal? Can’t people see past paint color"?” The answer is NO - no they cannot. It sounds great in theory, but honestly people just aren’t that imaginative. Minimizing the visualization work a buyer has to do will help keep you on their list as a possible new home.

So if you are planning to put your house on the market and don’t want to pay someone else to paint a room or two, take a weekend and get it done! Get your supplies, your tunes (and maybe some friends?) and get this part done. You will be glad you did and you will now have a fresh color palette to work with for your staging endeavors.

#2 We brought in furniture, which made it feel bigger

I’m not going to lie - I didn’t have high hopes for this house when I first toured it empty. The living room seemed small and I wondered how in the world a dining table would fit in its designated space since it seemed that a table would block an otherwise easy path to the French doors leading outside. 

But after we brought in furniture and defined the spaces, the areas actually felt larger. I could see and feel how the spaces could accommodate furnishings with no problem; whereas without staging I wrote off the house as a non contender. I just couldn’t visualize the space working for me as a buyer.  Once we placed the dining table I thought, “Oh a dining room table totally works in the space! And the living room is bigger than I thought!” It truly was an eye-opening moment in my short home staging career. 

I learned a big lesson from this staging project: It’s harder to picture scale than to experience it.  Buyers may not be able to visualize how a space can work for them and if they can’t visualize it, they will move on to another property never giving yours a second thought.  That is why staging is so important. It can give potential buyers the opportunity to see the space for what it can provide, not for what it lacks. With staging, buyers can see the house’s potential from the get go instead of writing it off the second they take a glimpse.

3)  We used a cohesive color scheme

While this contract did not stipulate staging the entire house, we wanted the rooms to feel connected and to make the house make sense to a buyer. Keeping consistency in design creates a calm, relaxed atmosphere for the viewer or in this case, the buyer. As we staged, we found black accents kept cropping up in different spaces. The front door was black and then upon entering we placed a large, black framed print of a farm landscape. We placed complementary black and white prints in an area that would draw the eye into the house once inside the door.

We then staged the living room shelving units with gold, neutral and black objects and added in some throw pillows with our accent color. Then black dishes on a black and white gingham placemats went on the dining table adding to the color cohesion.

Climbing upstairs the accent color continued into the landing where we brought in a cute bench and accessories with that target accent color once again. Lastly, we added touches of black in the master bath to complete the look.

Staging this home was such an eye-opening experience for some of us on the Dwell House team because the transformation was so phenomenal! When we first saw the property, it needed a lot of love. We cleaned everything down to the carpets, color neutralized the overly bold spaces, and then went to town staging with appropriate furnishings and creating cohesion through color. Using these home staging tips, you can start the process of DIY staging or redesigning your own home and start turning your property into a star!