How to Stage Your Living Room to Sell Your Home in DC Ranch

If you’re like most people selling a home in DC Ranch, your Realtor® has talked to you about how important it is to stage it properly. Staging is about more than cleaning up and rearranging your furniture – although those are both part of it. It’s really about making your home more appealing to prospective buyers.

And one of the most important rooms to stage is your living room. It’s where your buyers will spend a lot of time, outside the kitchen and the bedroom, and it has to be a welcoming, comfortable place.

Check out these five tips to stage your living room that can help you sell your home in DC Ranch quickly (and at the right price).

5 Living Room Staging Tips to Help You Sell Your Home in DC Ranch

When a prospective buyer walks into your living room, you want him or her to feel like it’s “home.” You can do that by following these tips:

Clean thoroughly
Declutter completely
Create clear pathways
Make the room exude comfort
Brighten the whole space

#1. Clean thoroughly.

For most people, doing a deep-clean is essential – even if you’ve had a housekeeper coming by weekly (or more often) during the time you’ve lived in the home. You can hire someone or roll up your own sleeves, but either way, it needs to be done. Take special care to hit all the hot spots. Make sure you:

Clean out sofa crevices with a vacuum attachment
Clean slipcovers and accent pillows
Clean the ceiling fan blades
Dust air vents
Dust all the wall art and photos
Dust the backs of electronics
Dust the ceiling and corners
Have the carpet, hardwood or tile professionally cleaned
Polish lamps and replace lightbulbs
Scrub the windows until they’re spotless and streak-free
Spot wash the walls (if your paint allows)
Vacuum the top and back of the sofa
Wash out windowsills
Wash the doorknobs
Wipe down switch plates
Wrap electronics cords neatly

#2. Declutter completely.

If there’s anything in the living room that doesn’t belong, take it out. Don’t leave newspapers or magazines behind, even if you read them regularly. When you find items that don’t have a home of their own, it’s time to make a decision: Sell them, donate them, or keep them packed away until you move into your new home.

Get rid of anything that’s broken or unusable.

#3. Create clear pathways.

We’re all guilty of having one piece too many when it comes to furniture. If you have something that doesn’t “fit,” whether it’s style-wise or size-wise, it has to go when you’re staging your living room. Make sure there’s ample space between seating and that there are clear walking paths throughout the room.

Pro tip: Pull your sofa about 6 inches away from the wall if it backs up to it. While it sounds counterintuitive, it actually makes the room look larger.

#4. Make the room exude comfort.

Your living room needs to look like the perfect place to wind down at the end of a long day. That’ll increase its appeal to potential buyers. You can do that by:

Adding tall or voluminous plants, especially in empty or unused spaces. Don’t add plants to areas that are already a bit crowded, though – you don’t want your prospective buyers to feel like they’ve walked into a botanical garden.
Trade out your coffee table for an oversized ottoman. You can add a tray with a small vase of flowers and a few books if you’d like, but it’s not always necessary. Don’t add the tray if the room appears crowded!
Use console tables to separate spaces if your home has a very open floor plan. Typically, that means putting a console table behind the sofa.
Add a throw blanket in your living room’s accent cover, as well as a few bright, vibrant pillows that practically beg guests to sit down.

#5. Brighten the whole space.

Throw back the drapes, pull up the blinds – do whatever you must do to let in as much natural light as possible. Check the living room in the middle of the day, and if there are any dim spots, add a lamp. Check it again in the evening, after the sun’s gone down, and look for other dim spots. You want to have a good mix of overhead lighting, task lighting, and ambient lighting that complements the room.

Are You Buying or Selling a Home in DC Ranch?

Call us at 480-360-0281 to find out how we’ll aggressively market your home to all the right buyers – or you can call us to talk about what you want from your new home in DC Ranch.

While you’re here, check out our:

Don Matheson
Realtor | Founder
The Matheson Team
RE/MAX Fine Properties
21000 N. Pima Rd., #100, Scottsdale, AZ 85255
866-613-8356
don@scottsdalerealestate.com