When It comes to the psychology of home staging, it’s not much different from how professional marketers use emotions to sell products and services. Let’s face it; we all have emotions and desires. We want to feel good and feel good about ourselves. Commercials don’t show average-looking people in average-looking cars in a starter-neighborhood. They show beautiful people, in luxury cars, living in expensive, designer homes. Marketers know that these images touch our emotions and desires. “People who drive that car are successful and happy. I want to be successful and happy. I need to drive a car like that.” You’ve got the picture.
These are the basics of marketing and they don’t change much- appeal to the senses and create desire. You can pretend that these principles don’t matter, but you may live to regret it if you are preparing to sell your home. When people are shopping for a home, they are not buying a box or a blueprint; they are buying a feeling that the house gives them when they walk through it.
The Goal of Home Staging
When you enter a home that is put together- clean, furniture nicely arranged, and attractively and currently furnished, that home evokes a feeling of success and stability. “I can afford to live like this? I can have it ‘all together’ too? That’s awesome. I’ll take it!” The home makes the buyer feel better about themselves. They’re buying the idea of the life that they want to have. Likewise, the opposite is true. Take a million-dollar home and show it dirty, with dated wallpaper, old carpet, and no style, and those who go through it will leave feeling worse about themselves even though they can afford a million-dollar home. That is not the life that they want. Few people can look past the décor to visualize the potential in a home.
Creating Desire with Home Staging
Consider the room in the photo above. This is the room that you see when you enter the front door. Before staging it looked like it does in this photo- nothing terribly wrong, just lacking anything to produce desire in the buyer. So the staging assignment is to produce desire in the buyer. Make this average little house look like a million bucks.
Let’s Stage it!
This is the same room as the previous photo with the red sofa and white chairs. We took it down to the “bare bones” and then set up a modern and attractive area to gather with friends and family. When you walk in the door and see this, you want to come in and see the rest. After you look, you want to sit here and just take it in and feel good. That’s what good staging does and why sellers who have their homes professionally staged sell their homes faster and for more money than those that don’t stage. Savvy sellers know that even in this brisk market, evoking feel-good emotions improves the bottom line.
We are creatures of feeling. We are affected by a feeling that is instilled as we look through a house. This room instills peace and cohesiveness. There are no distractions from mismatched or misplaced furnishings. There’s nothing you have to look over to see the potential, it’s “move-in ready.” This is why home staging works.
Find a professional Home Stager in your area and call for a consultation. They will help you come up with a plan to sell your home faster and for top dollar.