Color Plays a Huge Role in Neutralizing the ‘Feel’ Of Your Home
by Connie Williamson
The home stager walks in with an unbiased point of view – the mission is to neutralize the ‘feel’ of the home and remove all items and existing design in the home that might be too personalized.
Sounds a lot like cleaning out a garage, but home staging is a process whereby the home stager tries his, or her, best to turn the home into a marketable property. Apart from removing personal items like framed portraits and photos of family holidays, the home stager will also look through a palette of neutral colors with the homeowner, trying to come up with a decorating color scheme that will work for the particular target market.
Power of the palette
You’ll be surprised at the power of the color palette; it’s a well-known fact that changing the color of a room can literally transform the whole look of the room. For instance, a room with fuchsia walls can appear cramped and closed-up. When you’re marketing the property, the likelihood of potential buyers purchasing a home that appears cramped-up is minimal.
The first thing a home stager will do when he or she walks in is to evaluate how to change the appearance of any room by perhaps changing wall colors. We need to justify that while fuchsia is a nice color, it’s a difficult color to work with. It will make any room look smaller, as will any dark color scheme. If you want a home to appear roomy and airy, listen to the home stager, opt for neutral and brighter colors.
The fact is that it’s harder to match dark colors to the color of most furniture. For instance, if you really fancy a dark blue sofa you saw at a furniture store and that is the only color they have left, it would take a lot of mixing and matching to make the dark blue sofa match with fuchsia walls.
Neutral colors do not have to be boring
The home stager uses neutral colors for the home because they easily blend with most furniture and accessories. The home stager may feel that an easy chair will look better in the back room than it does in the living room, it makes the job of rearranging and moving furniture that much easier when the walls are painted in neutral colors.
There’s a misconception that walls or furniture with neutral colors are boring, unattractive, personality-less, and bland. While we cannot deny the fact that neutral colors DO lack personality, that’s precisely what we’re looking for…to wipe the trail of evidence so there is nothing left behind to remind the prospects of the previous home owner or seller. Neutral with style is never bland.
Easier to match up with wallpapers
Using wallpaper is an extremely easy and convenient way of changing the appearance of any room. For example, a stager might apply strips of wallpaper to a section of the wall to give it a little bit more character…or to make it less boring. Perhaps the target market is a group of urban, chic and modern people who despise anything bland and boring and in this case, the job of the home stager would be to add tiny touches throughout the home to remove any ‘boring’ aspects from the look of the home.
When the home stager uses neutral colors, it’s easy to add mirrors to the walls, especially when the mirrors come with bold and loud frames. If space were an issue, a home stager would certainly recommend adding one or two mirrors to give the illusion of more space.
Using neutral colors, as we said, is not boring. It’s a necessity when preparing the home as a marketable property. Only a professional home stager possesses the skill to implement and accessorize neutral color schemes without stripping the place of its appeal.
About The Author
For more information on home staging please visit Serenity Redesign at http://www.serenityredesign.com, or contact Serenity's home staging expert, Connie Williamson at (780) 417-9521 or connie@serenityredesign.com.
