Tag Archives: dogs

Space Sells – 10 Down-to-Earth Ideas for Staging a Spacious Look

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Living room with furniture barrier

Before Staging: Sofa is a barrier to flow

Living Room opened up

After Staging: traffic and visual barriers removed

A little extra square footage usually adds to the value of a home. Most of us won’t be building additions just to sell, but we can add value by making the home feel a little bigger using home staging techniques. Here are some space expanding ideas for sellers.

Let the light in. Wash the windows. Open or remove heavy window coverings. Make sure there is plenty of artificial lighting for even lighting. Use light reflecting surfaces and mirrors. Mirrors reflecting the floor visually expand floor space.

Colour it cool. To create optical illusions of more space, choose receding colours, that is, cool colours with green and blue undertones or greyed shades rather than bright, saturated colours such as bright reds or yellows. The brights appear closer and make the room seem smaller.

Contrast cautiously. Choose colour schemes with lower contrast. Black against white or navy against peach are examples of high contrast combinations while pastel green against pale blue or charcoal against dark purple are low contrast. It’s not the particular colours which make the room seem smaller, as much as the contrast of various elements. Too much contrast can make a room chopped up, overly busy and smaller.

Add height. Use elements that draw the eye up, for example, light ceiling colours, long drapes mounted high on the wall, simple crown mouldings, vertical decor elements like tall sticks. Remove wallpaper borders since they are too personal for selling and tend to pull the room in as much as they draw the eye upwards.

Show a little leg. The greater the expanse of floor for the eye to sweep across, the larger the room feels. Have as few things sitting on the floor as possible. Choose tables with glass tops and upholstered pieces with open legs instead of shirts. If possible, keep flooring colours consistent between rooms.

Watch for intruders. Wall cupboards or shelving visually bring in the room. Counteract that by allowing lots of open space on the shelves so the eye can go right to the back. Use less colour contrast between the wall and the shelves so the unit appears to protrude less. Visual barriers such as furniture pieces, screens or shower curtains also divide and shrink your space. Try to make what you can’t remove more see through Try a clear shower curtain in a small bathroom. Use armless chairs so you can see beyond them.

Try texture. A low contrast colour scheme still needs interest. Introduce that excitement by using a contrast of textures instead of colours. Shiny surfaces are more light reflecting, but shiny paint on walls will reveal imperfections and too much of it can give an institutional feel.

Scale to suit. If your furniture is massive, try something smaller in your small rooms. That doesn’t mean everything should be miniaturized. One large piece of furniture or artwork can be a focal point in your small room – you just have to have to simplify and edit the rest to suit. Less is more.

Be the editor. Trim the clutter and edit your collections to only three of a kind — or even just one. Take everything off counters to show the maximum workspace. Purge items from closets so they look half empty and twice as big. You’ll be moving anyway, so start packing now.

Breathe and go with the flow. Traffic flow is critical in a small home when it’s being shown for sale. But, this doesn’t mean you should line all the furniture tight against the walls. Give some pieces breathing room by pulling them out from the wall a few inches for an illusion of added depth. Remove non-essential pieces and allow plenty of room for people to walk through the spaces. If items block the flow, try angling them a little.

Author, Martha Stanton-Smith, owner of Rearrangements, is a Certified Canadian Staging Professional who helps serious home sellers in Kingston, Ontario get full worth for their homes. She completed her staging training in 2006. Visit her profile here:

Don’t Let Rover Make Kibble Out of Your Home Equity

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Rusty the german shepherd dog

Rusty is a great dog, but not much of a real estate salesperson

Dogs are popular pets. A 2009 survey by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media reported that, in the US, 74% of people liked dogs a lot. In Canada it was estimated that, in 2002, 3.4 million households owned a total of 5.7 million dogs as pets. There is ample evidence of the therapeutic value of dogs as companions. Many noble canines make an undeniable contribution to human society as working dogs.

However, when selling your home you’ll add hundreds to your selling price if you send Rover to a loving friend, relative, or quality doggy camp for a little vacation. Here is my reasoning.

Dogs don’t clean up after themselves. Home buyers don’t like to buy other people’s dirt so if you want the best sale, you have to make an extra effort to keep your place spotless for showings. My dog, as lovable as she is, slobbers on walls and drops food everywhere. She tracks in dirt on her paws routinely and sometimes she rolls in the dirt and brings in an extra batch for good measure. Now, it’s hard enough to keep your house cue-tip clean when selling anyway. A dog or two just adds to your work.

Dogs smell up the place. Even pet owners and dog lovers don’t like wet dog aroma. My old pooch even adds the byproducts of her aging digestive system to the air every so often. Silent but deadly; need I say more. Since smell is such a direct link to the buyer’s subconscious and triggers lots of emotions linked to smells from early childhood, we risk arousing some primal anxiety. It could just transfer into an unease about the adequacy of your real estate offering.

Dogs trigger allergic reactions. It is difficult to state what percentage of the population is actually allergic to dogs, although some say 15%. Many people who are allergic to dogs still own them, and may not even admit the origin of their symptoms. However, when you want the buyers to experience only the best as they tour your home, why send them into sneezing, wheezing discomfort. More serious is the fact that 30 – 35% of people who are prone to allergies or have asthma will suffer attacks triggered by pet allergens. Nearly four out of five (77%) of people in America suffer from asthma.


Some people dislike dogs, even have strong fear of them. The GfK Roper study found that 2% dislike dogs a lot and another 2% dislike them a little. For those with a strong dislike or fear of dogs, their tour of your home will be totally useless if the dog is at home because their focus will be entirely taken up by presence of a dog. It doesn’t matter if the dog is confined, it will still be the main thing on their mind. For example, I watch my friend stop in mid-sentence and lose her entire train of thought when we approach someone walking a dog. It might not be rational, but, it’s overwhelming.

Some people like dogs. 74% like them a lot and 14% like them a little according to GfK Roper. How could this possibly hurt your sale? Well, if they love dogs, they will be thinking about the dog, perhaps playing with it, talking to it or petting it, wont’ they? You are not selling dogs, you’re trying to sell a house. You don’t want them thinking about your pet when you are trying to get them thinking about themselves living in your house.

If you are serious about getting the absolute best price for your home, my advice is to invest in a little vacation for your pooches. If you can’t bear to do that, then prepare to do extra maintenance and have someone take the dog out for a walk every time there is a showing. For homeowners who have more than one dog, take the negaitive impact of one dog and increase it to the power of the number of dogs in the house. If you have more than four and cannot see taking them out during showings, please consider marketing your home as a “dog lover’s delight” at a reduced price.

Author, Martha Stanton-Smith, owner of Rearrangements, is a Certified Canadian Staging Professional who helps serious home sellers in Kingston, Ontario get full worth for their homes. She completed her staging training in 2006. Visit her profile here: