So you’re sitting down with your Realtor discussing listing your home within the next few months. You tour her around the house, and she compliments you on your taste. And then she says, “Let’s talk about staging during our next meeting.”

You’re confused. If you’ve got great taste, what needs to be changed?

Many homeowners don’t realize that staging isn’t about interior decorating. While an interior decorator works closely with you to reflect your personal taste, a professional stager is a merchandiser. A stager studies what can be done to make the house appeal to the widest range of buyers. It’s a whole different ball game.

Staging companies usually offer an entire menu to a homeowner — from spiffing up what you already have to throwing a few pieces of furniture into an empty room (this is called a “vignette”) to removing everything you own and starting from scratch. Studies show that a home that is staged sells for more money in a shorter period of time than those that are not staged. But staging comes at a price, often paid in escrow and taken out of your closing proceeds. So how can you learn more about it, and possibly save yourself some money? The answer: become a staging student.

Realtor.com’s Jillian Pretzel described her journey from layperson to amateur stager in her article, How Touring Open Houses Helped Me See My Own Home in a Whole New Light when preparing to sell her condo. She became the detective by putting on her buyer hat and touring a succession of homes for sale in her area. She learned a lot.

“While my original motive was to figure out what we wanted to buy, it didn’t take long for me to feel like an expert in buying and selling,” she says. She goes on to describe how she and her husband toured a house she adored, deeming it homey and elegant. “I was inspired by the kids’ rooms, with their vintage feel and soft colors. I even started imagining family dinners at the gorgeous wood table next to the kitchen. I could practically taste the ice cream we’d have for dessert.”

On her next outing she went to see another house, and within moments of walking in, she turned tail and walked about, describing it as “definitely skippable.” Then her husband stopped her, pointing out that it was the same floor plan as the one she had loved. She hadn’t even noticed. She had walked through the same rooms and seen essentially the same views through the windows without connecting the dots.

Pretzel came to understand that good staging offers a huge advantage and quickly set out to do more research on how it was done. Instead of moving all her furniture out of her condo, she left a few pieces behind to define the potential purpose of each room. “Buyers will have a hard time picturing eating their meals at a table they can’t see, or imagining falling asleep in a bedroom without a cozy-looking bed,” she realized.

As she walked through more open houses, she would often be overwhelmed by the gorgeous design and glamorous art pieces that seemed to have been made for the home. “I’d even go as far as to ask if I could buy that couch, or those bar stools, along with the house.” At other open houses, she would find herself unpleasantly distracted by an outdated dining room table and a china cabinet stuffed to the hilt with antique tea sets, gaudy light fixtures, and outdated drapery. The homeowners, no doubt, think their home is gorgeous as is. After all, it was their own personal slice of heaven all those years.

Really want to get some cool staging techniques and tips? Visit some model homes in your area. As you walk into each one, take note of the palette of colors the stagers used (usually the same four colors throughout the home, but emphasizing a different one in each room), how they employed the “rule of three” (no more than three different shaped and sized items on a given end table or fireplace mantel). Study how the color red is rarely used — perhaps only in kitchens and baths and employed to draw your eye toward a window. And take note of how less is often more, showing off a room’s size or even distracting you from it. Staging is indeed a science.

But don’t stop with a home’s interior. Pretzel described how she made a point to tour some condos with balconies to see how they compared to her own. “As I saw terrace after terrace with sleek furniture and creative features like shade-providing curtains, it quickly dawned on me they were much more stylish and welcoming than mine, even though they were about the same size. I realized there was a lot more I could do with this small space.” This inspired her to purchase some new cozy outdoor chairs for her balcony, add a small table and a few more potted plants, and even an outdoor-friendly rug for some more color.

In the end, she realized that she would have to spend money to make money when competing with other condos like her own. “When I first started looking at homes, I didn’t understand why they were priced the way they were. I’d see some homes with three bedrooms and three baths that were $100,000 more expensive than houses the same size in a similar area. It wasn’t until I toured the homes that I understood.”

Source: Realtor, TBWS