{Home Staging 101} Part 1: Laundry Rooms

{This is the first part in a series on staging a home for sale.}

My husband and I are preparing to sell the home we've lived in for most of our married life. And although we feel it is beautiful, we want to put our home's best foot forward by staging it for sale. Like getting your hair done for a big event, staging your home is getting it ready for all the prospective buyers who will be walking through the door.

I've partnered with Kym Tarr from Shoestring Homestaging to bring you tips on maximizing your home's appeal. Kym is a Professional Real Estate Stager, Certified Redesign & Staging Specialist as well as Qualified Colour Consultant & Interior Decorator.  And most importantly, she is a delightful person to work with!

  Not planning to sell soon? Don't worry, I'm also going to include tips along the way of simple improvements I wish I'd done before we decided to sell.  There are many home staging tips that can be applied to your home today to make it feel like a bigger, brighter and happier space.

Today we will focus on the changes we've made in our laundry room,and in the coming weeks there will be information on the transformation in other areas  of our home (as we complete them!)

BEFORE:

Here is what our laundry room looked like before Kym's help.  It was always a bright and beautiful space, but dark accents and too many items on display were making the room look small and busy.

Here are the things Kym suggested for this space:

• We didn't want to repaint the space (Because it has been painted 5 times in 5 years!  You can read part of that story HERE) so Kym suggested that we at least paint the shelf behind the washer/dryer and the top of the half wall the same white shade as our trim.
• She instructed me to remove some baskets and other items, to tuck necessities out of sight under the sink.  She also recommended that I remove all items from the sink and counter top.
• She recommended that I exchange the gallery wall of family photos for one larger piece.  We chose to use a mirror we already had.

AFTER

Our cleaner, fresher, brighter laundry room!

Other things we did:

• We replaced a damaged and ugly faucet.  Damaged items send the message that your home is a fixer-upper...NOT what we are going for!
• We touched up the trim and ceiling paint.

I couldn't be happier with the results.   The space looks bigger, brighter and cleaner.

Kym's Take away points for staging YOUR Laundry room!   

***Laundry is a chore we all have to do, but when staging a laundry room we don't want to remind potential buyers of work or lack of storage. So keep this neat and organized for maximum appeal. 

***If the laundry area is in a dark corner of an unfinished basement, we want to discourage that “dark and dingy “ impression.  So brighten it up (simply by adding larger wattage bulbs), keep it clean and perhaps even decorate it slightly, with freshly folded towels placed on the dryer.  The important thing is that the laundry room to be as pleasant a room as possible!

Even if you aren't selling your house....
Here are a couple things I wish I'd done sooner:

• Touching up trim and ceiling paint can have a huge effect on a rooms appearance. It isn't easy to see in the photographs, but my husband and I were blown away by how much fresher the room looked simply with a new coat of paint on the baseboards and door casings!  

•  Put product labels out of sight.  There is nothing pretty about a jug of detergent or a bottle of window cleaner.  Keeping these things out of site hasn't really complicated my life at all but goes a long way towards diminishing visual clutter.  And best of all, it's FREE!

If you want to know more about Kym Tarr and her Home staging and interior redesign services, visit her website Shoestring Home Staging.   You can also follow Kym on Twitter and follow her boards on Pinterest.

Oh, and in case you're wondering how I manage to get my laundry room looking so nice and tidy with 5 kids in the house....here's a photo of what my living room looked like while I was decluttering the laundry room....

Yup.   The living room is next in line for staging, so check back soon!

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