4 Tips for Staging your Home This Fall

Start with the Basics

No matter the season, staging your home for listing photos, open houses, and showings boils down to a few basic practices:

-Maintenance
-Decluttering 
-Cleaning 
-Depersonalizing 

It’s good practice to ensure appliances and systems are in working order prior to listing your home. For instance, if you know your HVAC system isn’t working properly, have it inspected. If you’ll be showing your home in the fall when it’s cooler, you’ll want to have the heat on for buyers touring the property.

To make your home more appealing, declutter and clean each space prior to having professional photos taken. Clutter is distracting and can make a room look smaller. And nothing is more off-putting than touring a dirty home with a funky smell. 

Clean your home and keep it clean. This can be difficult if the property is on the market for longer than a few weeks, but regular sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming should help your home present well to buyers. Consider hiring a professional cleaning service to shampoo carpets, clean those hard-to-reach places, and take care of any odors you may have grown used to.      

Lastly, if you have any personal photography hanging on your walls, you’ll want to switch it out with more generic art or mirrors. Buyers want to visualize themselves in that space, and staring at the homeowners’ photos as they walk through the property muddies this image. This will also help protect your privacy from nosy neighbors.    

Create Ambiance

Take advantage of the fall season to create ambiance and make your home feel cozier.

In the living room and bedrooms, layer warm blankets and throw pillows over furniture to make the space feel more inviting. To give your home that seasonal scent, use air fresheners, potpourri, wax melts, or candles, if you’re comfortable.

As the days get shorter, you’ll want to ensure you light your home properly. Brighter rooms look bigger. Open the curtains and blinds to receive as much natural light as possible, and on dreary days, use other light sources, like lamps, to help brighten up the space.

If your home will be shown in the evenings when it’s darker, ensure you turn on the lights in every room so buyers don’t walk into a dark house. You can help set a cozy mood by lighting candles (you may want to opt for LED candles when preparing the house for a buyer showing), switching on lamps, and turning on the porch lights.   

Decorate—but Not Too Much

Here’s the fun part—decorating!

It’s important to decorate for the season you’re in, but you’ll want to refrain from going overboard with holiday décor, as it could: 

-Alienate buyers who don’t celebrate the same holidays you do.
-Make listing photos look dated if your home is on the market longer than 60 days.
-Clutter the space you just spent time cleaning and decluttering.
-Distract buyers from your home’s positive features.

Begin with a fall color scheme. Swap out your current curtains, doormats, blankets, and throw pillows with those in shades of brown, burnt orange, red, or yellow. You’ll want to stick to neutral décor options that help underscore the time of year, like pumpkins and seasonal flowers. One or two Give Thanks signs shouldn’t be an issue, but the key here is to remember that less is more.

Focus both Inside and Outside

Proper staging is crucial for helping buyers feel at home as they enter your house, but curb appeal is just as important. The porch and yard are the first thing a buyer sees when walking up to your property, and this picture will help inform their opinion of your home before they even step into it.

In the fall, it’s important to maintain your yard. Fallen leaves can be picturesque, but clogged gutters and wet leaves caked over the driveway make a home look unkempt.

Keep your driveway and sidewalks clear of any fallen debris, and clean out your gutters. Consider planting fall flowers and pruning bushes and trees to make your yard look more attractive.

Lastly, decorate your porch. Hang a fall wreath, add a haybale and some pumpkins, or place a welcome sign by your door. And remember to place doormats both inside and outside your home for buyers with wet shoes.

Speak to an Agent for Home Staging Tips  

Your real estate agent can help you decide how to best stage and decorate your home for the season. If you’re having second thoughts about a design choice, talk to your realtor.

If you’re looking for a realtor to list your home this fall, reach out to one of our agents! We look forward to working with you!