Staging is the process of preparing your home for sale so buyers can focus on the space itself during showings and in listing photos.
Done well, staging helps buyers notice light, layout, upkeep, and move-in readiness instead of personal items or small distractions.
The goal is not to create a fake look. It is to make your home feel clean, cared for, and easy for buyers to picture as their own.
Below are a few staging tips to help make your house more appealing to potential buyers.
The first step is to put away anything that is not essential. This will open up the house so that it appears more spacious.
Even if you have to rent a storage unit, finding a new home for all of your family’s projects and collections should clear some space and help buyers imagine their own belongings in your home for sale.
Pay special attention to entryways and narrow hallways to improve your prospective buyer’s sense of spaciousness.
Be sure to clear off the things that gather on kitchen counters and surfaces, such as old magazines and stacks of mail.
Also, emptying out your closets of half of the things inside them will make them look much roomier.
Use this time as an opportunity to thin the number of largely unused items that your family has collected over the years.
And look on the bright side; moving into a new house will be much easier after you have donated your unneeded items to a charity.
You would be surprised by how much the sense of smell comes into play when buyers are viewing a house.
To avoid turning buyers off with pet or smoke odors, make sure you give each room a deep clean, including the air vents and carpeting.
Just covering up stale odors with air fresheners won’t do the job.
Buyers are looking for spacious rooms with a lot of natural light, so make sure you open the blinds and turn on all the lights.
If you have rooms that are a bit dark, you can add floor lamps to make them brighter or flowers to suggest sunlight.
Home staging can make a big difference in how potential buyers see your home for sale, so make sure your home feels bright, open, and easy to walk through.
It’s not just the inside of your home which should be inviting to buyers — the outside of your home should be, too. Trim hedges, maintain the lawn, power wash the walls and try to inject some color, where possible. Your yard is your home’s first impression on buyers. Make it a great one.
Minor visible damage can pull a buyer’s attention away from your home’s best features. Before listing, focus on easy-to-spot issues that make a room feel unfinished or poorly maintained.
Fresh paint is one of the simplest ways to improve presentation. If walls are scuffed, dated, or painted in very bold colors, repainting with neutral tones can help buyers focus on the room instead of the work they think they will need to do after moving in.
The same idea applies to cracked tiles, broken window glass, and torn screens. Buyers tend to notice defects like these quickly, and even small issues can make them wonder whether other maintenance has been overlooked. If possible, take care of these visible fixes before photos and showings so buyers stay focused on space, light, and condition rather than distractions.
When deciding where to spend time and money, start with the issues buyers will notice right away in photos, at the front door, and while walking room to room. Prioritize simple fixes that are highly visible, relatively low-cost, and easy to complete before your home goes on the market.
In most cases, that means decluttering, cleaning, improving lighting, touching up paint, and repairing obvious cosmetic defects such as cracked tiles, broken windows, or torn screens. Larger upgrades are usually less important for staging unless the problem is so noticeable that it dominates a buyer’s impression of the home. If a project is expensive, time-consuming, or mostly hidden from view during a showing, it may not need to be your first pre-listing priority.
Sammamish Mortgage can help. We serve clients across Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Oregon, and California. Since 1992, we’ve been providing several mortgage programs and products with flexible qualification criteria to borrowers across the Pacific Northwest. Visit our website to get an instant rate quote or to use our online mortgage calculator. Or, reach out to us if you are ready to get pre-approved for a mortgage.
Start with the basics that buyers notice right away: put away nonessential items, clear clutter from counters and surfaces, deep clean the home, remove odors, open blinds, turn on lights, and make sure rooms feel easy to walk through. Improving curb appeal and handling small visible repairs can also make a strong first impression.
Focus on anything that makes the home feel crowded or overly personal. Clear kitchen counters, entryways, narrow hallways, and other visible surfaces. Reducing the number of items in closets can also help them look larger, and storing projects, collections, and extra belongings can make rooms feel more open.
Prioritize low-cost changes that improve presentation. Declutter, clean thoroughly, remove odors instead of masking them, open blinds, turn on existing lights, and rearrange spaces so they feel open and easy to move through. Yard cleanup and touching up obvious small issues can also help without requiring a major budget.
Avoid leaving clutter out, overfilling closets, ignoring odors, blocking natural light, or letting small visible damage distract buyers. It also helps not to rely on air fresheners to cover stale smells, since buyers may still notice the underlying issue.
Common mistakes include keeping too many personal items in view, allowing clutter to build up on counters and surfaces, leaving dark rooms dim, ignoring pet or smoke odors, and skipping basic exterior upkeep. Small visible defects such as cracked tiles, broken glass, torn screens, or scuffed walls can also pull attention away from the home’s strengths.
Not every room needs elaborate staging, but the whole home should feel clean, cared for, and spacious. Pay the most attention to areas buyers notice first and spaces that appear in listing photos, such as the entry, kitchen, main living areas, hallways, and any dark or crowded rooms.
Start with highly visible, relatively simple fixes that buyers will notice in photos and during showings. Good priorities include touching up paint, repairing cracked tiles, replacing broken window glass, fixing torn screens, and addressing other obvious cosmetic damage that makes a room feel unfinished or poorly maintained.
If walls are scuffed, dated, or painted in very bold colors, repainting can improve how the home shows. Neutral tones are usually the safest choice because they help buyers focus on the space rather than on strong color preferences or the work they may think they need to do after moving in.
Curb appeal shapes the buyer’s first impression before they even walk inside. A trimmed yard, maintained lawn, clean exterior surfaces, and a little color outdoors can make the property feel more inviting and better cared for, which supports a stronger overall impression of the home.
Staging can be worth it when it helps buyers focus on light, layout, upkeep, and move-in readiness instead of distractions. Professional staging is not always necessary, though. Many sellers can improve presentation with decluttering, cleaning, better lighting, odor removal, curb appeal work, and small visible repairs.
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