You’ve heard that you should stage your home to sell. But there is more to staging than beautiful furniture. There is strategy and psychology behind why you should stage your home when you sell. Furniture plays an important role in how we navigate and experience a space. How your home looks corresponds to how it feels.

If your home looks	Then it feels
Dated	Old
Vacant	Empty
Crowded or full	Small
Clean	Cared for
Light & bright	Welcoming
Organized	Roomy

You want your home to feel inviting, welcoming and homey. Set the stage. It’s value lies in these four factors: visualization, context, design and getting buyers in the door.

Visualization

Staging shows a buyer what a space feels like at its best. It shows a buyer where to go and what to look at. It draws one’s eyes to the most pleasing element of a room. It feels appropriately sized and communicates that homey feeling in person and in photos.

Context

Staging offers buyers and agents visual queues about a room, like how big it is or how tall the ceilings are. When you look through listing photos, the furniture gives you clues about the space.

How much space is there around the beds? Is the room spacious or small? The photo below shows us that a large room with ample space for a king sized bed. Light and shadows show us there are floor to ceiling windows, even though the windows are cropped out of this photograph.

Furniture designed to sell homes

Most buyers have a hard time seeing past the furnishings right in front of them. Their mind can’t take down the dated wallpaper or put up new drapes.

Staging is furniture designed to attract your target market. Imagine for a moment you’re and empty nester downsizing from a four bedroom, two story home in a neighborhood with prized schools. What type of buyer will your home attract? Should you present a product of furniture chosen for 68 year-olds? Of course not! Show buyers a home curated with furniture they can relate to.

Or maybe you’ve outgrown your home and everything feels tight and full. When potential buyers walk in your door, do you want them to feel cramped and crowded? Buyers will feel the way the space is presented to them.

Get buyers in the door

Before any buyer ever walks through your door, they will look at photos of your home. Either on their computer or their phone. You get only a brief moment to attract their attention and turn their scrolling into a tour. Getting lots of views and saves online is great, but it’s unlikely that someone will purchase your home without seeing it in person.

Your home will photograph at its best with staging. It will be more likely to stop the scroll and get buyers in the door. When buyers arrive, the staging will make them feel at home. When they feel at home and can see themselves living there, they will be more likely to write an offer. Better yet, they’ll fall in love and write an even better offer.