10 Tips for Staging Kitchens and Dining Spaces

This is part 3 in a series called Home Staging 101.  The lovely and talented Kym Tarr of Shoestring Home Staging is teaching me how to stage my home for sale, and we are taking all of you along for the ride!

Here are 10 tips that Kym and I feel will help your kitchen and dining spaces look their best for prospective buyers!

1.  Clean your kitchen as if the sale of your home depends on it.  This is the simplest and cheapest way to make your kitchen look more attractive! You can find several of my kitchen cleaning tips and tricks here.

2. Limit counter top items to 2 essentials.  For me that was my stand mixer and my french press/electric kettle.  Technically those last items are two things, but I count them as one because, let's face it, I'm not going to be digging through the cabinets pre-caffiene.

3.Consider removing extra furnishings.  Free standing islands, kitchen trolleys and dining hutches can close in a space.  If you cannot remove these pieces, ruthlessly edit the items displayed on or in them.

Removing the island my husband lovingly built for me was emotional.  It really sunk in that soon this kitchen will be the hub of somebody else's home.  But by removing it, we've made room for prospective buyers to see this space as their dream kitchen, not mine.

4. Pot racks, although super handy, send the impression that the kitchen does not have enough storage.  Either remove pot racks or stage them sparingly with only 3 immaculately clean items.

5. Remove extra chairs from around the dining table.  Four to six chairs is ideal.  We've kept seven chairs because that is what our family needs, but we can easily tuck one out of sight for showings.

6.Choose a centerpiece for the kitchen table.  A vase of flowers, urn full of fruit, or a series of 3 simple decorative items will work well.

7. As a rule, remove table linens from tables.  My table is so long I feel it looks funny without a simple white table runner, so use your own judgement but remember that less is more and simple is beautiful.

(I kinda have this thing for white table runners.  They make my heart swoon.)    

8.  Let as much natural space into the area as possible.  Remove heavy drapes and consider replacing them with something light, like sheers.

9. If necessary, make upgrades to the kitchen.  This will depend largely on your budget and the age and style of the home.  New hardware can make a huge difference for a reasonably small cost.

10. Replace or remove any damaged or broken items.  Broken items send the message that the house is a fixer-upper....complete with a fixer-upper price!  Our beloved wallpaper behind the dining table, for example, had to come down because it was showing some wear and tear.

Bonus tip:  #11: Be thorough, but don't obsess.  Done is better than perfect. You could spend a lot of time and money trying to create the perfect kitchen, only to have the new owners hate it and change everything.  Your goal is to help your kitchen (and your home) put it's best foot forward!

Here is the before and after shot of my kitchen:

To learn more about Kym Tarr and her awesome Virtual Home Staging Service, check out her website.  Please also take a second to "like" her new facebook page.

I'll leave you with some more glamour shots of my fabulously clean and uncluttered kitchen.  Now all I have to do is figure out how to keep it this way!

Thanks so much for visiting the Complete Guide to Imperfect Homemaking!