We all know that home staging can be a ‘make it or break it’ deal for some properties. Staging a home allows for the potential buyer to imagine life on the property, and helps those less creative to plan further design. There are quite a few projects that will dramatically increase the buyer’s response without breaking the bank. Here are a few home staging trends!

Curb Appeal

The first impression of the home that the buyer will have is going to be determined by the exterior of the house. Curb appeal, encompasses the property from the curb to the front door. Let’s consider some of the easiest ways to better your curb appeal:

• Landscaping: You can of course employ a landscape architect to help you plan and invest in the landscaping of your property or you can apply some of these quick fixes:
  • Incorporate simple, organic, and dark colors into landscape planning. Instead of traditional white or grey fences, try dark blues and greys. Gardens do not need to be overdone as simplicity will go a long way, adding a rock garden or mulch is always a possibility as long as there is some incorporation of greenery. Also, consider adding metal features such as railing and metal based lighting fixtures.
  • Sustainable features: An exciting new trend is harvesting rainwater. Having a catchment for rainwater will allow a sustainable water source.
• Replace Doors- replacing garage and front/back doors can add so much value to the property. Keep your color schemes in mind when selecting the right doors for the home. When considering potential paint colors, stay away from super bold colors as those tend to date the property. Utilize more neutral colors for any exterior painting projects with allowance for a pop of color within your color scheme.

Color Scheme

You want to keep the home as gender neutral as possible when staging and this can be difficult when considering furniture and paint colors. Ideally, the home will have a healthy balance of both male and female energy. We love Benjamin Moore’s 2016 color trends for inspiration. The perfect color scheme will be a combination of neutrals with allowance of up to three bolder colors. This scheme should act as a theme throughout the house for a feeling of continuity. This doesn’t mean each room should have the same colors, or be all white, but there should be a clear and concise design/color flow throughout the house that makes sense for the location of the property. You can see more color inspirations on House Beautiful.

Organics

One thing is clear, having a strong organic look and feel to the house will sell the property. This is as simple as adding plants and greenery to most, if not all areas of the home. You can also consider learning more about Feng Shui, which lays out very clear rules for optimal energy flows. About Home offers some great advice and educational tools for all things Feng Shui. Natural lighting is also going to play a big role in creating the organic feel of a home. Maximize any opportunity to use natural lighting

Now let’s look into room specifics.

Living Room

The living room is going to be the first place in the home where you can show some of the home’s character. Try some of these trends to give your home the design edge that will turn lookers into buyers. You want to stay away from too much white as this room needs to be functional and not just decorative. All white designs may turn the buyer away if they have children.

Urban

This design style will have a-lot of multi-functional spaces with plenty of storage. You will see quite a few industrial features and exposed brick in an urban design style.

Bold

Bold design styles will be just that! You can incorporate either bold color or bold furniture designs to wow the buyer. The key here is not to over-do it, as you are not the buyer and do not want to turn them away.

Gender Neutral

Gender neutral styles are perfect for single family homes as you want design styles that have both male and female energy. You want this design style to feel like home.

Eclectic

Eclectic design styles are going to draw their inspiration from varying cultures and styles. Just as with the bold design styles, you do not want to over-do it. You can capture an eclectic design by purchasing vintage pieces.

Kitchen

We will always love our dark kitchen designs with stainless steel appliances because it looks very modern and clean. The downfall with dark designs is that the kitchen can end up looking very industrial and feeling cold. In Home Staging Trends 2016 we are seeing more neutrals mixed with greens and oranges in the kitchen. This will make the kitchen feel more warm and like home. Kitchen design really comes down to personal preference; in the home staging trends it is safe to lean towards more neutrals so the buyer feels that they still have some room to design the kitchen themselves.

Bedrooms

This is our favorite part of staging, after all it’s where the magic happens! (Of course, we mean sleeping). This year the bedroom space is home to some pretty cool trends. It’s time to get rid of the boring white on white, 2016 is all about creative, colorful, and eccentric bedroom spaces. Consider purchasing vanities and other bedroom features from a vintage store. Wallpaper is back, it’s fun and easy to change. There are quite a few themes for the bedroom that you can use when staging, traditional, eclectic, modern, and Mediterranean.

Check out some of the pictures below for some bedroom staging inspiration.

Laundry Room

One feature that buyers are looking for is a welcoming laundry room. This is a simple fix that involves light colors, and plenty of storage space wherever possible, and again more plants. This is one area of the home where the buyer will spend a lot of time and to know that the area has been designed (even minimally) is a huge deal.

Check out these updated laundry rooms for inspiration.

Attic/Basement

Old cluttered attics always make for great additional bedroom space, and basements can be transformed into additional living/family quarters. Attics can also be transformed into a studio space for creatives.

As the developer, you want to keep the options open to the buyer by not assigning the attic to one specific purpose. You can do this by utilizing the natural light and leaving the space open to interpretation. As for the basement, keep the designs very open with lots of lighting fixtures, as the basement is going to have low natural lighting. You want to avoid having a lot of dark features that will make the space look smaller and unwelcoming.

Again as long as the basement is finished, you can get away with minimal staging, the important thing to remember for basement and attic space is that unless specified the buyer is going to be happy to know that their biggest concern is adding furniture.

Check out these ideas for basement/attic spaces

Sheds

One of our favorite trends for converting old sheds is making  a “she-shed”. We see more home owners converting their sheds into the female equivalent of a “man cave”. The space is used for creative endeavors or simply just as a spa escape…in the yard! As a developer you would not go too far into the personalization process of this space; yet you can present the option to buyers by making the space more feminine with open concepts and clean designs. If this is too ‘anti-feminist’ for you, you can of course use the shed as an outdoor child’s play area, or…storage!

We hope that you found some great inspiration and staging ideas from this article and would love to see some of your staging pictures.

Please email them over to hello@sharestates and you may be featured in our next staging post!