Before selling or renting out your house, try sprucing it up a little with these tips to fetch a higher selling or rental price.
Article taken off ezinearticles.com
Decorating To Increase House Value
When it comes time to sell a home, everyone looks for inexpensive ways they can increase home value before the realtor comes in and does their own appraisal. Did you know that home decor plays a major role in buyer attraction?
The things that will turn a buyer off (unusual, non-neutral paint colours, personal pictures, worn out furniture) can be turned around and used to attract buyers-we want a house we could really picture ourselves in! There are a few decorating tricks that can be done throughout your home that add far more value than the money spent updating. For example, you may know that the kitchen is the most valuable room in the house, and naturally the first room buyers are attracted to; therefore, small updates to the kitchen decor will increase the value of your home overall. This article has a few valuable decorating ideas to increase buyer attention.
Since we mentioned the kitchen first, we will start with kitchen and dining room decor. Kitchens and dining rooms don't have to feature contemporary style to be updated. There is a difference between updated decor and timeless decor. If a feature in your kitchen is "dated" as in it doesn't flow with any theme, modern or classic, because it was bought in a past decade and popular in a past decade, it needs to be changed out.
Unfortunately, kitchen cabinetry falls into this category first. One amazing transformation you can make to cabinetry that appears outdated in anyway is to stain the wood another colour or paint the wood a solid white or black and replace all of the hand pulls.
If you can afford it, new appliances from a microwave, stove/oven, and refrigerator will have a direct affect on all of the kitchen decor. An outdated stove sticks out like a wound in kitchen decorating. Here is a really cool affordable solution: you can actually buy adhesive stainless aluminium sheeting that can be cut and stuck to an outdated fridge or dishwasher to make appliances look like stainless steel. Also, a more affordable change you should consider is adding in a backsplash and new kitchen countertops. These two changes are a couple of the first that interior designers consider for adding value in a kitchen.
For dining room tables and kitchen tables, you won't necessarily have to spring for new furnishings, but instead find some affordable tableware and table linens that make the room feel more formal and useful for entertaining. A table with a stylish tablecloth, placemats, linen napkins, and a table runner with tableware will look dinner ready, and increase tasteful style appeal, which in turn increases value.
Here are few bathroom-decorating tricks that increase value. Repainting the walls is always a plus, and be sure all of the grout between the tiles in the shower or bathtub area looks clean and new. Nobody likes gross grout. Also, replacing old dingy shower curtains with a new contemporary shower curtain is an immediate and smart transformation in bathroom decor. Replace faucet fixtures if they appear outdated, but if they are not outdated, faucet fixtures should "look" new with a good cleaning.
Finally, a custom built cabinet around the sink will immediately increase the value if it looks like an invested update. Bathroom cabinetry is very often a decade faux pa. You can probably build a new designer-looking cabinet between $50-$100 easily. What is easiest bathroom remodeling trick that increases bathroom value? Frame in an unframed mirror with black or white 2" wood trim.
Lighting is also a very affordable fix and sometimes makes a untold huge amount of importance to buyers. New lighting makes a house one step closer to being move-in ready putting your home immediately above consideration of a comparable home that needs a lot of updating in the home decor.
Repainting all walls neutral tones and fixing up any minor decor problems (incomplete wood floor jobs, refinishing floors, patching holes, steam cleaning dirty carpets) will add value to your home. Nurseries once painted very nursery-like colours should be repainted like you would when leaving an apartment. De-cluttering doesn't attract buyers' attention as much as it avoids distracting and upsetting buyers.
Providing a clean welcoming feel in every room is important in bringing in buyers. Add pillows and throws to couches and beds. Replace outdated or worn bedding with new bed linens. Add headboards to beds and seat cushions and toss pillows to trunks to make a seating bench instead of having an awkward item taking up room. Every room and every item needs to serve a valuable purpose when selling a home.
