One of my tag lines is ‘the way you live in your home is not the way you sell your house’ and this point needed to be understood by the home seller. Not all (and in fact not many) potential buyers can visualize what a room ‘should’ look like. As home stagers we know that ‘function’ is first but it took some convincing for the home seller to understand why we were doing what we were doing.

Let me explain…this home seller lives in a very spacious 5,000 square foot home and like many people with a home this size, the family doesn’t use every room. However, when it comes to preparing your property for selling – which includes home staging – you don’t want to rely on an empty space not making sense to potential buyers.

In this downstairs area – which could be a nanny’s suite, an in-laws suite, a bed & breakfast guest area etc. we wanted it to have some appeal to potential buyers. Keeping it the way it was, to us, was going to be a lost opportunity for the seller.There is a nice size kitchen in this area along with a bathroom and bedroom!

Kitchen area with opportunity for eating and living

So by just using some of his home furnishings from other rooms, we created a nice eating area with 2 comfortable chairs to create a small living room-type space. Now potential buyers can ‘see’ what the possibilities are for this room!

By creating a nice eating and living area it's more inviting!

Home staging expert – trainer and author Dana J. Smithers appeared on the CTV Morning News February 1st. It’s a great way to kick of February as it’s a busy time for home sellers and home stagers. Preparing your home is a very BIG JOB and starts with decluttering, depersonalizing and cleaning…and then the staging.

This clip (show) won’t stay up forever but for a few days you can go to CTV Morning News site and watch the show.

Dana's Tips for Neutral Paint Colours - Accent in brights!

On the set of CTV Morning News

Whether you need some great looking & inexpensive drapery panels for staging or to brighten up your home Fabricland offers some terrific buys. As a member for $15 – $20 you can always get at least 25% off draperies and fabrics. Right now they have a fantastic sale with 50% off! Their panels give any home an updated look.

As a home stager we recommend using a hard window treatment such as a 2″ faux wood blind (white to match the trim) and just add side drapery panels to soften the look, and to pull the room together. This is an inexpensive and attractive way to get a more updated look in your room. For a really modern look choose the ones with grommets and purchase a new brushed nickel or black rod iron rod; or go for the simpler version with a rod pocket which slips into standard curtain rods. I don’t recommend spending much money on full draperies because the new owner may not like them! Be smart – stage with less.

Gorgeous Drapery Panels

50% Off - Lots to choose from!

We hope you can join our Founder & Creative Director, Dana J. Smithers PRES Home Staging Expert on CTV Morning News show Wednesday February 1st. It’s a great way to kick off a month where many home sellers are getting serious about marketing their property. She’ll give you lots of TIPS on what you need to do to get your property ready for selling!

It’s a proven fact that staged homes sell faster and for more money than homes that are not staged. Because of the downturn in the economy many home sellers want to give home staging a try but aren’t always sure on what they need to do. Many have questions like ‘what’s the best Return-On-Investment? what paint colours are best for selling? do I need to change the flooring? if my property is vacant do I need to put furniture in it? and on and on the questions go!

If you can’t join us, the next best solution is to take a look at Dana’s eBook: DIY Getting Ready For An Open House in 10 Easy Steps! And if you really don’t think you can do this yourself – check out the PRES GRADUATES and Locate A Stager near you! For only a few hundred dollars you can get some of the best advice available to help you get top dollar for your property!

HomeGain is a well known industry leader in providing home stagers factual current statistical information for the home improvements that will give the best Return On Investment (ROI). This survey was published in January 2011 and is relevant in today’s marketplace and in many parts of Canada. The survey was conducted with 600 nationwide US realtors and these were their recommendations to home sellers.

You can read the full article but these are some of the highlights:

TOP 10
1. Cleaning and de-cluttering ($290 cost / $1,990 price increase / 586% ROI / 99% recommended)
2. Lightening and brightening ($375 cost / $1,550 price increase / 313% ROI / 97% recommended)
3. Home staging ($550 cost / $2,194 price increase / 299% ROI / 80% recommended)
4. Landscaping ($540 cost / $1,932 price increase / 258% ROI / 93% recommended)
5. Repair Electrical or Plumbing ($535 cost / $1,505 price increase / 181% ROI / 92% recommended)
6. Update kitchen and bathrooms ($1,265 cost / $3,435 price increase / 172% ROI / 75% recommended)
7. Replacing or shampooing carpets ($647 cost / $1,739 price increase / 169% ROI / 98% recommended)
8. Painting interior walls ($1,012 cost / $2,112 price increase / 109% ROI / 96% recommended)
9. Repair damaged floors ($931 cost /$1,924 price increase / 107% ROI / 93% recommended)
10. Paint outside of home ($1,467 cost / $2,222 price increase / 51% ROI / 81% recommended)

In comparison to the 2009 survey results, the top five home improvements were the same, except that Lighten and Brighten and Stage home for sale were flipped for second and third top home projects.

The home improvements with the highest price increases to a home’s resale value is Updating the Kitchen and Bathroom ($3,435 price increase), followed by Painting the Outside of the Home ($2,222 price increase) and Home Staging ($2,194 price increase).

I am really excited about finding this Canadian eco-friendly product from Frame Your Mirror and I want to share it with you. It is amazing and very cost-effective glue-on-frame that totally transforms a ‘blah’ or slightly-damaged-around-the-edges mirror. You can use this in your own home but for staging – now this is a beautiful thing – because you can attach it with velcro! This is a product that’s been a secret for far too long!

They offer a good variety of frames and you can quickly find out the cost of your mirror by using their Price Calculator. Check it out and I think you will like it a lot!

This is what they have to say about it:

“At Frame Your Mirror we provide Canadian consumers with an eco-friendly, practical, easy to install, and cost effective way to transform plain bathroom mirrors into attractive focal points without removing the mirror from the wall. We specialize in providing a tasteful selection of customized, high quality laminate wood Custom Mirror Frames in Calgary and across Canada!

Discover how a decorative mirror frame can refresh a tired bathroom simply and inexpensively! With numerous mirror frame styles to choose from, you are sure to find the perfect solution to achieve an inexpensive Bathroom Renovation or Bathroom Remodeling project.

Order our custom mirror frames online. Our frames are shipped disassembled and upon delivery are easily assembled and installed.”

Exciting time ahead with lots of changes for the home staging and redesign industry in 2012. The world economy is changing. Many home owners – sellers and dwellers will want to make good economical choices whether they need a professional eye to redesign and refresh their existing home, or need assistance in preparing their property for selling. That’s where the PRES home staging and redesign graduates come in.

Making the investment of a few hundred dollars or several thousand dollars for a professional PRES home stager

PRES Staged Home SELLS!

90% of home buyers want a ‘Move-In Ready’ home and you can give that to them by consulting (even for jut a few hundred dollars) with a PRES home staging graduate! PRES graduates are also trained and qualified to set you up in your new home by working with all of your personal possessions and collections they had you pack up for selling!

As a home staging instructor I don’t recommend staging with religious holiday decorations but I do believe you can use some seasonally coloured decorations like red, silver and gold. If the property does not sell in December the staging can stay as it is into the next month. Plants and florals work well at any time of the year but red amaryllis and white orchids look quite stunning.

Gorgeous Xmas display

Exquisite white orchids - so lush & beautiful

Smashing red garland with white orchids

We have a local florist shop that I love going into for inspiration called Special Moments. The owner Jennifer Sullivan does absolutely sensational displays every single month. I even go in her shop just to get a visually high on the florals and all the home decor items she has.

Take some time and get inspired by going into your local florists shops – so magic!

The colours we home stagers choose for our home sellers are typically neutrals. They can be neutral beige, green or blue but they are never too bright although they could be trendy.The colours I choose for my home owners who are living in their home are a totally different story. Read on…

I have been working with a client for years now and I started out doing a redesign for her. Since I am also an interior decorator I selected new upholstery fabrics for her two chairs, selected new window treatments, helped her purchase a new dining room table with custom upholstered chairs, and shop for her on occasion to update the look of her home. They thought they might sell but they looked around and decided to stay put and do some updates with paint colours and a few other small accessories.

So their dull and dated dining room went from blah…to WOW! and all with some colour that jazzed this boring room up!

Tired green dining room...

WOW! this is gorgeous and has so much life!

Sitting Room is so outdated and tired...

She was 'over the moon' with this colour choice!

So why do home stagers traumatize their home selling clients? Well, we never ever do this intentionally but what I have found over the last 10 years of transforming clients’ homes – is that a lot of their emotions can be triggered by what we do. We are known as ‘change agents’ because we not only change the look of the home, we change the energy and because of this everything feels different. While to our eyes we know we have created a fabulous look for the home seller (we have the results to prove this) to many it just does not feel like ‘their home’ anymore and this can be very, very upsetting. What makes it even harder is the fact that they have to live the way we have set the home up, until it sells. If they are used to living with a lot of  ‘stuff’ having us stage the home can be even harder for them. And the longer they have lived in their home, the more they may struggle with the actual process of clearing out clutter, and prepacking what we don’t want to use in the staging process.

When I was doing my ‘LIVE’ call for my new PRES home staging home study course, this was one of the topics I wanted new stagers to be aware of – all the different emotions that home sellers feel when they have decided to put their home on the market. Some are happy to be moving and others may feel sadness or even grieve the loss of their home if they really do not want to move. All sellers feel some kind of stress (good and not-so-good) and some go through their emotions as if they were on a roller coaster.

During the call I was also talking about the fact that while we aren’t there to be ‘therapists’ we are there to help the client and often we act as ‘staging coaches’. Over my 10 year period as an interior decorator, interior redesigner and home stager I have become quite attuned to knowing what’s going on for my clients and what may be ahead for them. I try and make the process as painless as possible and treat my clients with special care. I keep in touch with them until the property sells and by the time it has they hopefully are feeling better and perhaps even a little tiny bit excited now…