You’ve heard of curb appeal. It’s how attractive your home looks when viewed from the street. Real estate professionals consider curb appeal one of the five most important factors in selling your home. Some feel it can add up to 10% to how much you get for your home.
But curb appeal only works while potential buyers are outside your home. If the good first impression of your home’s curb appeal doesn’t carry through inside the house, you can lose buyers just as easily as if the house had no curb appeal.
Ways to Make Inside Look as Good as Outside when Selling Your Home
Just like curb appeal can add significantly to the price you get for your home, so too can taking a few steps to improve your “interior appeal”. While staging your house for sale is a great way to do that, there’s only so much a home stager can do, especially if you’re on a budget.
Here are just a few things you can do inside your home to make it look more expensive, and help you get higher offers from prospective buyers.
Declutter
You hear a lot about decluttering from home organizers. But we’re not talking about putting away the magazines and mobile devices.
While you might find all your furniture, artwork and curios comforting, they may be give your décor a cluttered look to a buyer.
Especially in the first rooms visitors see when they enter your house, minimize the amount of furniture, accessories, bookshelves and so on to open up the space. It makes it easier for buyers to visualize how they might live in the space, versus showing them how you live in the space.
Use Neutral Colours, Patterns and Textures
Both on your walls and with your furniture, use neutral tones and textures. Sure, you might absolutely love your fuschia sofa, but it can be jarring to a buyer.
Add a Splash of Colour
Going entirely neutral can make your home look like every other house for sale. “Let’s not do anything to upset the buyers!” But you can set your décor apart without scaring anyone way by adding a splash of colour. Look for creative and colourful throw pillow for the couch, or try a colourful piece of art on a wall.
Update Your Door Handles
This is one that many homeowners don’t think of. You use them so often, you might never actually take notice of them. If the handles on the doors to your rooms are older knobs, think about changing them to handles. You’ll be surprised at how much more up-to-date, and expensive, your home will look with just this one simple, relatively inexpensive change.
Create the Illusion of Higher Ceilings
There’s a reason you’ll see “10-foot ceilings” or “cathedral ceilings” as selling features of more expensive homes. Higher ceilings feel more spacious and luxurious. Regardless of how high they are, you can make your ceilings look higher. In the kitchen and dining room, pendant lighting will help create a sense of height. If you’re tiling the bathroom, think of placing rectangular tiles vertically instead of horizontally. And make sure your window drapes are floor-to-ceiling.
Get New Faucets
Kitchens and bathrooms are considered the two rooms buyers focus on the most. If yours haven’t been updated in a while, there’s a quick way to divert buyers’ attention from that fact. Kitchen and bathroom faucet designs, materials and finishes have gone through an explosion of creativity in recent years. Switch out your old faucet for a new one and it will make the entire room feel more up-to-date.
If you want to learn more ways of increasing the value of your home when selling, contact The Tar Team today.