Staging Your Home for Sale: Bathrooms and Bedrooms

Staging Your Home for Sale: Bathrooms and Bedrooms

Bathrooms

When showing your home for sale bathrooms are extremely important. This is where you really have to make the prospective buyers feel like nobody lives here or has ever used the bathroom!

• Make sure your bathroom is not just clean, but absolutely sparkling.

• All toilet seats must stay down (essential when taking photos, too).

• Hide all garbage cans, plungers, cleaning products, etc – anything unsightly.

• No bath mats on the floor (highlight the tiles).

• Shower curtain should be open with hardware visible (show that steel). If your hardware is rusty, replace it. Shower curtain should be outside of the tub and not tucked behind (get a new curtain if needed – white).

• All shampoos, used soaps, scrubs, lotions, toothbrushes, face wash, etc, must be hidden away. Try to make the bathroom as empty as possible and as if nobody uses it. Anything on counters (other than staging/decorative items) must be hidden in cabinets.

• Replace your towels with immaculate, white, hotel-like towels (tri-folded).

• No toilet paper on the toilet paper holder – especially for photos!

Preparing a bathroom should be pretty self-explanatory. This should be the cleanest room in the home, as people will judge harshly if not. Hiding all personal items is essential in bathrooms, as nobody wants to feel like someone else has been using this bathroom. What we always ask sellers to do is have a bucket and throw in everything you need to use day-to-day, and hide the bucket in a cabinet for open houses and showings, as people rarely open bathroom drawers and cabinets.

Clean and hide!

Bedrooms

When preparing your bedroom for sale, think about the last few hotels you have stayed in and how the room looked when you walked in.

• Make your bed – perfectly. Tuck in duvet very tight into frame. Buy a new duvet set (white and plush) along with some decorative pillows. Buy a few large and fluffy ones and some smaller matching ones. You can always have a nice throw blanket down as well.

• All personal items hidden (no personal photos), cords tucked away and night stands cleared. You can add “vignettes” such as stacks of three books, or three decorative items, etc… Always work in threes – it’s the magic number!

• Candles in bedrooms are always a nice touch.

• Make sure your bed is centred in the room and nightstands are even.

• Clear out any extraneous items (such as exercise equipment, ironing boards, etc) or unnecessary furniture, as these will make the room feel smaller.

• Add generic but nice art on the walls (a store such as Home Sense can take care of this for a low cost).

• Want to go the extra mile? Set up a styled tea set on a tray on the corner of the bed!

In bedrooms, less is more. Spend the money on a simple duvet set and decorative pillows. Remember, nobody actually lives like this but everyone imagines they will. Hotels create that feeling and so should your home when marketing it for sale.

Bonus Tip: All Closets

• “Edit” your closets – meaning organize and clean up every closet in the home, not just the bedroom. The more stuff you have in a closet, the smaller it feels, so try to remove a lot of it (check out REW’s decluttering articlefor help with this).

• Store any clothes or items that you do not need or are seasonal (this is a very cleansing task, and worth doing anyways, as you’re moving).

• Organize shoes and store seasonal shoes and any you do not need handy

• Tuck in and fold your clothes so they are not hanging over edges (this makes the closet feel larger)

• Colour co-ordinate your clothes in groups – it will create a sense of serenity rather than chaos. Envision a show home closet: There are three white dress shirts, three white blouses and maybe a dress, a few designer shoes and a few designer purses. Try to get there!

Preparing a home for sale is a tough and tedious process, but the more work you put into it, the more money you will get out of it. Preparing properly also shows pride of ownership, which rubs off on the potential buyer.

Information obtained from Rew.ca and Leo Wilk