Home for Sale: The Art of Staging a Home to Sell

Our REALTORS® can tell you that properly staged homes frequently end up on must-see lists and spend substantially less time on the market. Sometimes, the real estate industry has a perception paradox that a neutral minimalist home provides the perfect space for potential buyers to envision themselves living there.

While home staging is all about de-personalizing the space, using eye-catching artwork can help your buyers create an emotional connection with your home. The imagery found in pictures and paintings adds another layer of meaning to your staging efforts. Here's how to use staging artwork.

• Identify Your Target Audience
  While you may never know the particular tastes of prospective homebuyers, it's wise to err on the side of caution when staging your home. Steer away from images of people, family photographs, religious and political artwork, and inappropriate artwork. Your main goal is to help potential buyers envision themselves living in your house. If they see images of people or religious and politically-charged artwork, they will be reminded that they are strangers in the home. To appeal to a wider set of buyers, choose nature images, abstract artwork, figurative renderings, geometric shape, still life subjects, or figurative silhouettes.
  
  
• Complement the Overall Style of Your Home
  You're not just selling your property, you're also selling the lifestyle that comes with it. A complete mishmash of décor can be very off-putting to potential buyers. Consider the mood for each room when hanging your artwork. Is it a bright and busy kitchen or an inviting and relaxed living area? Color is very important in artwork and home staging, with neutrals being the most popular option. But why not add pops of brightness to a room by complementing colors found around your rooms in accessories and pillows?
  
  
• Fit the Scale of the Space
  The shape and size of the art should be scaled to the height and width of your walls. We can agree that the bigger a room looks the more appealing it is to homebuyers. So, putting a large piece of art in a small room is going to make it feel cramped. On the other hand, large rooms can appear uninviting and cavernous if they have blank walls. As such, you might consider using a large scenic piece or clustering several pieces together to make the room cozier.
  
  
• Avoid Art That is Too Busy or Eye-Catching
  What emotions do you want to evoke with your artwork? While buyers will be evaluating many aspects of your home, it's likely that a particular subset of buyers will be more interested. Want to show off a classic wine cellar? An abstract artwork pointing to it will let the eye travel to the adjacent beautiful space. Have an outdoor infinity pool that you want to draw attention to? Complement it with pale blue pieces or art in the rooms leading up to it or with striking outdoor sculpture. Just make sure your art won't distract buyers from focusing on the home itself.
  
  
• Create Balance
  Have you ever walked into a living room with pieces of art or pictures that were hung too far apart from each other, in no particular pattern, or with mismatched colors, styles, and frames? This is a common staging problem, especially with art that was received as a gift or bought without giving a thought to its color or size. In some cases, homeowners with high ceilings will place the art halfway up the wall, which can mean people pass right by it because it was placed higher than their heads. You want to make sure your wall art is hung correctly and the room is balanced. If you're hanging art over furniture, it should be at about 25% the width of the furniture.

Feeling overwhelmed at the thought your home stand out from other Nassau County homes for sale or Suffolk County homes for sale? Our realtors can help you choose the best art, highlight your home's best features, and create an inviting vibe that will appeal to the right buyers. Contact us to learn more.