I don’t know about you but I like to think that I’m pretty good at decorating my home. It’s warm, inviting, has some modern trendy items. But when it comes to selling my home, is having a well decorated home the same as a staged home?

When we decorate our homes, we’re personalizing our living space. Our colours on the walls, our furniture style, our photos and art. Decorating our home is a reflection of who we are.

Staging, on the other hand, is about de-personalizing. It’s about using “visual psychology” to create an environment that highlights a home’s possibility to potential buyers. It’s about creating the “WOW FACTOR” that highlights the strengths of a property to create a dynamic first impression. That’s specially important these days when so many homes are visited online.

Beyond cleaning and repairing, home staging is about de-cluttering and removing or repositioning furniture. it may even mean painting the walls a neutral colour and installing different lighting.

The objective is to have potential buyers envision the property as their home, a place where they can see themselves living, entertaining and perhaps even working.

Staging is about strategically highlighting a home in a way that encourages and enables buyers to connect to the property emotionally.