Part of a Stager’s goal is to strike a balance between making rooms look spacious and decluttered without being sterile. And we need to appeal to all 5 senses to evoke an emotional connection in potential home buyers so they feel that your house is the only one they want. So here are a few tips to help you sell quickly!

• Invite them in. As realtors are unlocking the front door, potential buyers have ample time to check out the state of your entry. Make a good first impressing by decluttering a porch, putting fresh paint on the front door & trim, and adding a welcome mat & a seasonal wreath.

• Deodorize. The first thing buyers notice when they walk in isn’t what they see, it’s what they smell. Open windows as often and as long as possible to air out any stale smells in your home. If you have pets, keep them and their paraphenelia (litter boxes, crates, toys, feeding bowls, etc.) hidden away during a showing. Eliminate pet odors with this “reci-pee.” Spray an air freshener lightly just before a showing, or bake some homemade bread or cookie dough 20 minutes before a showing. Buyers will have a tasty snack and they’ll instantly feel at home from the smell.

• Declutter. Pack up or purge all the excess clutter & furniture from every room. Counter should be completely clear or have no more than 2 major appliances on them in a kitchen. My favorite trick is to clear a room’s furniture out (except the essentials needed to indicate to a buyer what the room’s purpose is) until the room fees too “empty.” Then bring back in 2 items which will make it feel more lived in, but spacious. Place the large furniture items first and fill in any holes with side chairs, tables or bookcases, plants, or artowrk. Purge non-essential items, or pack & move them to an attic or rent a storage unit while your home is on the market.

• Depersonalize. Buyers can’t picture themselves living in your home if photos of your family are everywhere. Remove personal items and photos from tables & walls, and if art is needed on a long wall, replace it with a neutral print, a black & white photo, or create your own art to match the space by framing fabric or wrapping paper in the same color scheme.

• Create focal points for each room. This is important to show off a room’s assests while detracting from its flaws. In every room, decide what the best feature is and manoever the furnture and accessories around it to draw the eye to it like a runway. For example, if you have a fireplace, remove or shift the placement of any furniture that blocks its view from the room’s entry and line up a sofa and side chairs perpendicular to it on the left & right. If it’s a bedroom, make the bed the focus with attractive bedding or a padded headboard that matches the bedding. Don’t have a focal point? Create one with interesting artwork, or paint one wall a darker shade than the rest of the room to draw attention to it. This works particularly well for that tiny or boring bedroom that’s being used as a storage space or Home Office.

• Neutralize the color palette. Bold colors may be great to live in, but no everyone likes them, so to appeal to the widest audience, choose neutal or earth tome paint colors. Here is a list of my favorite paint colors & tips. Try to use no more than 2 or 3 colors in a space. (My favorite color scheme is to use 2 shades of the same color (like a taupe on the walls and dark brown furniture) then let my 3rd color be more bold, like a red, teal, or green pops of color in the fabrics & artwork. And if you have mismatched furniture & accessories, make them look more coherent by painting them all the same shade of dark brown, black, or cream. Spraypaint has come a long way — Rust-o-leum has new shades that cost about $7 can, have a spray trigger for easy use, and don’t require sanding or priming.

• Clean. Make sure your entire home is spotless. I’m talking “toothbrush” clean in the kitchen & bathrooms — every corner & crevice should sparkle. Got a stubborn shower stain? Read my article on how to get it clean and keep it clean. Hire a professional cleaning service if you need help and pay attention to the details like cleaning blinds, fans & baseboards. Have the windows professional washed inside & out, and if your home is natually dark, consider removing blinds & curtains completely while it’s on the market to let the most light in. Powerwashing the outside of your home is also worth the money.

• Add a special touch. Paint a picture for buyers of how much fun it is to live in your home and appeal to their 5 senses by creating little vignettes that make rooms look like you were there just moments ago, lounging or enjoying the space right before they walked in. In the rooms used for relaxation like the living room and master bedroom, cozy up a space with something buyers want to taste and touch, like a breakfast tray with a danish and cup of tea on it, or an open book that’s turned face down on a coffee table, edge of the bed, or nightstand. Toss fluffy pillows and a down throw on a bed so buyers yearn to dive in and snuggle up for a nap. Add fresh flowers for buyers to smell in any space. Show off a gourmet kitchen by making it look like you were just there baking homemade goodies — toss flour on the counter, and set a rolling pin beside a rolled out pie crust or slab of cookie dough that’s half cut-out. Leave a plate of cookies and some cider on a counter with a note to buyers that reads, “Welcome Home!” In smaller eat-in kitchens or sunrooms, a cup of coffee next to a folded newspaper evokes a picture of quiet mornings. For playrooms, set up a board game or pause the Wii and drop two controllers where buyers might be tempted to play a round. Liven up a space with music — we don’t want noise and chaos, just a little soft background music; try soft spa music near an entryway or in a master bathroom suite, and something more upbeat and festive for an outdoor patio where grilling and parties take place. In a sunroom, deck or patio area, set out a pitcher of margaritas, lemonade or iced tea on a table, or set a tub of iced beers next to a grill. It’ll make your home seem like a cozy place to relax and have fun and will get buyers’ juices flowing thinking of all the down time they can have because your home is move-in ready!

With just a little cash and a lot of elbow grease, you can help your home stand out and create a space that buyers can’t wait to move into!

1. Heat a cup of water for 3 minutes in the microwave
2. Let it sit and steam up the microwave for 1 minute to soften all the stuck-ons
3. Take 1 minute to wipe it out. Easy!

Got smells too? Add a lemon slice or lemon juice to the water before you heat it to freshen things up.

Timesaver tip: Common sense will tell you to wipe up immediately after a mess has been made before it can get stuck on. But if that just isn’t gonna happen, wipe the microwave out after you heat any liquid (coffee, tea, soup, etc.) since the steam will still do the trick.

So try my 2 favorite products — I cleaned my shower ONE TIME and it’s still sparkling one month later! What a time-saver!

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser: For just over $1 a sponge (and they're reusable), you can use one to scrub the shower one time. It pills the scum away -- just wipe the surface until it feels smooth to the touch. Depending on how bad your shower is, this might take 5-15 minutes. If you have a stand up shower stall, it's easier to do if you scrub the shower while you're in it with the water running so all the grime goes right now the drain. I used to wipe mine clean after each shower in about 30 seconds, but I don't even have to do that anymore thanks to the next product....

Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner: Purchase the starter kit, insert the batteries, drop in the cleaning solution, and hang from your showerhead or a suction hook mounted on your shower wall. After you shower, press the button and it'll give you 15 seconds before it sprays, so you have time to quickly towel off and step out. The spray head pivots 360 degrees AND up and down, so it gets high, medium, and low areas of the shower. If you opt not to clean your shower first, this product will melt goo build up in about 2 weeks on its own. Either way, you'll have a sparkling shower with absolutely no effort. (Walmart is the cheapest price I've seen for $12.95)

And in the {edited} words of Scarlett O’Hara, “With God as my witness, I shall never {clean showers} again!”

My favorite taupes & tans: Laura Ashley “Taupe 3″ at Lowe’s, “Cafe Au Lait” from Restoration Hardware, Seaside Retreat’s “Beachnut” at Lowe’s, Laura Ashley “Stone 2″ at Lowe’s, Ralph Lauren’s “Wave of Grain” at Home Depot, “Macadamia” SW6142 from Sherman Williams, and for a darker shade, “Cappucino” from Restoration Hardware.

My favorite greenish-bluish-gray: Seaside Retreat’s “Silver Sea” at Lowe’s. I love this color — it’s more green during the day, and more blue at night. Great for a spa bathroom, or soothing bedroom color, or home office. Another more icy-blue alternative (if you’re doing the blue/chocolate brown thing) is “Palladium Blue” by Benjamin Moore.

My favorite “zen greenish-gray”: Seaside Retreat’s “Stonecastle” at Lowe’s looks like a gray on the swatch, and will shock you that you just painted a room dark gray while it’s wet on the wall. However, once it dries, it’s the most perfect zen grayish stone green color and is a perfect “green neutral” for a Master bedroom, or a spa bathroom. Want a darker tone? Try “Rope” by Eddie Bauer at Lowe’s.

My favorite red: Laura Ashley “Russet 5″ at Lowe’s- very dramatic, very nice red. Takes 3 coats (like any red) but gets lots of wows! Great in a country style or very modern home.

My favorite yellow: For a real yellow that’s definitely yellow but soft enough to live with and nothing like an obnoxious stoplight, I like “Crane Cottage Yellow” from the National Trust Historic Paint Colors line at Lowe’s.

My favorite neutral yellow: National Trust Historic Paint color “Belle Grove Buff” at Lowe’s.

My favorite “french” blue: Seaside Retreat’s “Seaside Villa” at Lowe’s for a blue that’s bold without being a harsh or “Carolina” blue.

My favorite off-white: Seaside Retreat’s “Magnolia Spray” at Lowe’s. It’s got a touch of pink to it, but looks fantastic with espresso dark woods, white trim, and neutral flooring. If you like a more yellowish off-white, I like Ralph Lauren’s “Sail Cloth”.

Which brand of paint do I like? You may notice most of my paint recommendations come from Lowe’s or Walmart and not Home Depot. Not a slam at Home Depot, but I can’t stand the Behr brand paint they carry. It’s too thin so it takes too many coats for my “let’s get this done” nature. I love Lowe’s Valspar paint, and I also love the Walmart Colorplace brand. It’s rumored to actually be generic Sherman Williams at 1/3rd the price — so at $12/gallon, everyone can afford to spruce up the place! My only issue with the Colorplace paint is that their latex paints get a bit “latexy” so if you’re using painter’s tape, pull it off when the paint is about 75% dry, so it doesn’t ruin the clean edge.

Painting tips for picking the right shade:

• Always paint color samples on your wall instead of holding up fan decks or paper swatches. Color can vary greatly depending on what color’s underneath it, whether or not you’re priming, the wall texture, etc. And what looks like the perfect taupe on a 2 inch swatch can be a grayish-green when it coats a whole wall.
• Paint samples on multiple walls. What looked good on a side wall may not look so great when it’s on your focal wall. You want the main focal wall to be the perfect shade when you’re trying paints out. It’s amazing how the same color can appear completely different (too dark, too light, too yellow, too green) depending on the room’s natural light and furniture placement. This tip is especially important in paints with a grayish base (taupes, grays, some greens & blues).
• Look at your sample in both daylight and at nighttime. It may look great during the day but too dreary at night. If that’s the case, use my next (and favorite) tip:
• Try a percentage of the pigmentation. For example, if you like a color in the can but think it dries too dark on the wall, ask for a paint sample of the original color at 75% pigmentation. It’ll have more white in it so when it dries it’s a little lighter. I like this better than the old rule of “if you like a color, go up 2 shade on the swatch card.”

Happy painting!

If your fireplace doesn’t spark your interest or isn’t the first thing you notice when you walk in the room, here are some tips for staging it.

But remember that redesign is different from home selling. Redesign is customizing the look to fit your personal style, and staging for home selling is neutralizing your style altogether. Either way, here are some tips they share:

• First, clear the clutter off the mantle and remove furniture, plants, toys, papers, and general clutter from in front of the fireplace. Start with a blank slate.
• Next, if you have a wood burning fireplace, clean it! Scoop out all ashes ,and if you have dirty brick, use soap & warm water to scrub it (and possibly a wire brush if it’s really dirty).
• Does the wall the fireplace is on draw your eye immediately? If not, think about painting the wall 2 shades darker than your existing wall color, or a contrasting tone on the color wheel. You can also pull a favorite color from accessories like pillows which will tie the whole room together when you’re done. Usually a quart of paint will be plenty for at least 2 coats with some left over for touch ups later. If you have exposed brick and it’s dating the room, paint it! Light, creamy, earthy tones are hot right now and will make the room feel larger.
• If you have a brass fireplace grate, your room will automatically look dated. Disconnect it, and for a $5 can of black heat-resistant spray paint used for grills, you’ll have a more modern look.
• Does your mantle fit the scale of the fireplace? If not bulk it up with some 2×4s or some decorative trim. Paint it to match the existing trim in your room.
• Next step is to choose one large item to place over the mantle, usually some cool artwork or a mirror. In general, I love mirrors, but when they’re hung over a fireplace, they’re really too high to reflect the room and end up showing off a white ceiling or boring ceiling fan, which is not good. If you do use a mirror, try something in a round or oval shape to offset the squareness of the fireplace. If using artwork, fit the scale of the wall. In most cases, a 24×36 will work nicely.
• Now accessorize. If you like symmetry, get 2 of the same decoration to place on the each end of the mantle, or use decorations with a similar size or color. If you like asymmetry, keep balance in mind. Your accessories don’t have to be matchy-matchy, but they should balance visually. So mix a large, light colored item with a small dark object on one side (or a collection of mid-toned items like similar colored pottery), and a single large dark item on the other.
• Family photos. Here’s where the redesign vs. home staging differs. If you’re selling the home, eliminate all family photos. People want to picture their own family in the space, not yours. If you’re just redesigning, feel free to use photos, but paint the frames to be the same color so it’s soothing to the eye and less distracting. All black or all metal look very modern.
• Use a plant or small lamp to give your mantle some life. Greenery & light energize a space. If using candles, be sure they’re lit for an open house.
• Now that your fireplace is gorgeous, it’s time to make sure people see it when they walk in. Treat the fireplace as if it’s another piece of furniture in your home and arrange existing seating around it. If you think of the fireplace as part of a wall, you’ll be more likely to cover it up. If you have a corner fireplace, try angling the sofa perpendicular to it and lining up a coffee table like a runway leading to it.
• For an open house, be sure the fireplace is lit! It draws the eye, and conveys a coziness that will make everyone want to snuggle up. The only time this is a bad idea is when it’s over 80 degrees outside, or no one will be in the home for several hours after it’s shown.

I’d love to see some pictures of your rooms and hear your design tips!