Making your home as appealing as possible is one of the key ways to get a buyer interested, and potentially sell your home faster. Kitchens are a great starting point as they can be easily and inexpensively staged.
Before Staging:
First step, the kitchen countertops need to be decluttered as much as possible. If the listing is occupied, staging the kitchen can be a challenge as lots of ‘daily use stuff’ needs to be either organized attractively or put away. Be as practical and realistic as possible. Microwaves, coffee machines can often be incorporated into the ‘picture’.
After Staging:
To stage a kitchen my favorite ‘props’ are: a cookbook (preferably medium size, hard cover, with colorful photos of food inside) & cookbook ‘holder’, assorted ‘knicknacks’ to be grouped into little vignettes, a small artificial plant, multi-tiered serving rack with realistic ‘fake’ fruit, and sometimes ‘kitchen art’. They say “a picture is worth a thousand words”, so these photos are good examples. Once you have a ‘look’, the pieces can be used ‘over and over’. When you look at the photos you will notice I use many of the same kitchen items to stage different listings.
Where to get the ‘knick knacks’/accessories? Ross is an excellent source for inexpensive ‘knick knacks’: cookbooks, kitchen utensils with holders, kitchen ‘art’ (framed pictures of fruit, teapots, etc.), multi-tiered racks, kitchen towels, etc. If you don’t already have some on hand, inexpensive cookbooks can also be purchased at Barnes & Noble. Just be sure the cookbook has lots of large, color photos.
The ‘cost’ of staging most kitchens is minimal. The multi-tiered racks can be purchased for less than $15 each, same for cookbook holders. ‘Realistic’ fake lemons, oranges, apples, etc. can be purchased at WalMart for about $1 apiece. Don’t spend more than $20 for ‘kitchen art’. The ‘orange’ wall art in the example cost $19.99. Many of the items used in staging kitchens can be things you may have ‘lying around’ in your kitchen or ‘throw aways’ that can be repurposed. The tea canister actually held tea. When the tea was gone, the canister was ‘repurposed’ rather than tossed and is now an often used kitchen staging ‘prop’.
In summary, kitchen staging items are simple, inexpensive and, you can reuse the items you may already have. Be creative!
This staging article written by Karen Robertshaw, RA.