Dear Sellers: Listen to the Stager & Paint the Wall

Sometimes people think paint doesn’t matter. “It’s easy to change,” they say. That’s 100% true. It’s inexpensive, as well. If something’s easy and cheap, it can’t have much impact, right?

Wrong!

When you sell a home, you want to create a setting in which the new owners can picture their lives unfolding. That’s where a professional stager comes in. Their job is to help you (the homeowner) create a neutral canvas so that buyers can more easily envision themselves in the home. Staged homes remove specific elements of decor that scream “I’m a seller with a strong opinion about what should be done with this space!” and replace them with elements that whisper, “Look at this nice room…you can see yourself living here, can’t you?”

In recent months, I learned how important painting is in the art of staging — not once, but twice!

Sharon of Sharon Atchison Staging staged two homes for me, and in both homes, she suggested to the sellers that they paint their dining rooms. Both planned to, but for various reasons, ran out of time before the houses were listed. Both houses sat on the market for longer than houses traditionally sit on the market. (Or at least, longer than most of my listings sit on the market.)

Finally, desperate to sell, both owners found time to paint their dining room walls. Guess what happened next?

In both cases, the very next people to walk through the homes wrote offers.

You can see the before and after photos below. A couple hours of work, a couple gallons of paint (it was just one wall, so maybe just one gallon?) and boom! Instant offer.

What’s the moral of the story? When your stager tells you to paint a wall, paint the wall!