Brighten Up Your Home with These 5 Budget-Friendly Tips

Want to bring some brightness to your home and not spend too much? Whether you’re staging your own home or you just want to live a happier life with better light quality, you can brighten up your home with these 5 budget-friendly tips.

Tip One

Remove the curtains and/or blinds This is our first go-to trick when staging a home that feels dark. In this case, the homeowner also painted the walls white for a major transformation with home staging. Here’s a before and after.

Looks like a completely different room, doesn’t it?

Tip Two

Bring in table and floor lamps Obviously, right? More lamps offer more light. You don’t need to spend a fortune on high-end chandeliers and and designer end-table lamps. You know all the affordable furniture & accessory websites: Wayfair, IKEA, Overstock, West Elm, and many more. We say shop local! Go check out the local second-hand and vintage stores. Here in the Berkshires, you can’t throw a lightbulb without hitting an antiques store. There’s also Goodwill.

TIP THREE

Lighten up your furniture If you can afford to go out and buy new sofas, chairs, ottomans, and rugs…terrific! If not, invest in a quality sofa cover that’s a lighter or brighter color. New bright pillow covers. A fresh white duvet cover. A lighter rug.

And when we say “lighten up your furniture” we also mean you can remove some of the clutter — curate your furniture. Create seating spaces that allow for easy movement and conversation areas. Use a light area rug to define the space and leave the surrounding space clear.

TIP FOUR

Work with what you’ve got Dark walls or paneling that you can’t or don’t want to transform? That’s okay. Look at the example below. The knotty-pines walls morphed from dark and heavy to a charming natural accent when we lightened up the furniture (and removed the curtains, of course).

TIP FIVE

Mirrors This is an age-old design technique. Glass mirrors are first documented in the 3rd century! Candle-holding mirrored sconces helped to brightened very dark rooms. (We stumbled on this history of the mirror…fascinating!) While we don’t use many mirrored candle sconces, we do place mirrors across from windows. We recently did this in a charming country house. We strategically placed 3 mirrors on different walls (the one below in a bookcase!). And we used a mirrored cocktail table.

BONUS TIP

Clean your windows 😂 You’re welcome.

Cover photo courtesy of Dan Alden Country Real Estate Services.

Blue Crush With Us

Blue is by far people’s favorite color. In fact, according to the popular real estate/design site Apartment Therapy , 42% of women and 30% of men prefer it over all other colors. We have seen this in our own experience as home stagers. Blue is the most common color we encounter in homes, on walls, bookshelves, carpets, cabinets, tiles, and sofas.

Here are some tried and true techniques that we employ when we work with lots of beautiful blue.

Add More Color

When we are staging a room with lots of blue walls, we treat blue as a background color and bring in a lot of whites, neutrals and pops of color to diminish the strength of the blue. We transform blue from the primary color into one of a number of important colors. Painting your walls blue? Here are 50+ Perfect Blue Paint Colors.

Use Blues and Complementary colors

Sometimes we feature a bold blue pattern on furniture or accessories to make a statements with blue - we want to intrigue visitors’ eyes. Try a large floral patterned sofa in different shades of orange, which is a natural complement of blue. We employed this technique with a home that was languishing on the market with no offers. After the owner followed our advice, the home sold within two weeks for $50,000 over the asking price. In this photo, we used navy blue and orange to create energy. Below we used dynamic contemporary art in blues and blacks to draw the eye up.

Blue and White Crush With Us

A blue and white color scheme is timeless. If you have a lot of blue in a room, try balancing it with large swaths of white--on baseboards, ceilings, window sills, bannisters--to create a sophisticated and soothing atmosphere that will be pleasing to many people. Guaranteed. (If you love blue and white together, follow the Instagram hashtag #blueandwhitecrush ← we use it sometimes.) Here are more tips from Homes and Gardens on how to decorate with blue.

Textures Create Interest

If you have a large space of flat blue color, like a wall, use accessories with shiny finishes and textures that catch and reflect light. If your blue surface is shiny, try the opposite--nubby textiles and textures. This holds true for any large area of one color. 

Are you planning to sell your home? Or are you a realtor selling a home? We can stage it to maximize your sale price. Call us today at 917.543.4590 for a consultation or click here to contact us. If you don’t already, follow us on Instagram and/or Facebook @stagedryte

How Do You Decorate With Yellow and Gray? Pantone Colors 2021

Why does everyone seem to be using the exact same color at the same time? You go into a home goods or furniture store and you see the same pops of color at each one…it’s not a coincidence. We use some trending color in home staging, judiciously. Our goal here is to help you understand if YOU should use it in your home décor.

Since 2000 the Pantone Color Institute has promoted a Pantone color of the year (sometimes, as in 2021, a pair of complementary colors) that they believe evokes the spirit of that year. (Learn more about Pantone in our previous blog post: What Is a Pantone Color?) The 2021 Pantone Colors are yellow and grey -- Illuminating 13-0647 and Ultimate Gray 17-5104. In an unmistakable nod to our pandemic reality, the company describes the colors as “A message of happiness supported by fortitude…We need to feel that everything is going to get brighter – this is essential to the human spirit.”

So when you see this yellow and grey color scheme everywhere you look--clothing, makeup, graphic design products, even some kinds of specialty foods, like cakes and cookies--it’s not a massive case of color ESP among manufacturers and designers. It’s the result of a carefully orchestrated marketing effort that is meant to saturate the market with the year’s color.

Why are we telling you this? Well, if you’re painting and decorating a home, you have to choose a color scheme. When you look around for color inspiration, you’re likely to see this profusion of Pantone color of the year everywhere and you might be tempted to go whole hog with one of these beautiful, trendy colors. If you’re like us and staging a home for sale, sure: you can invest in some on trend colors. But if you’re decorating your own home that you’ll be living in for some time, you need to remember that “color of the year” means that soon it will be “color of the last year.” It will seem trendy and on brand this year but by next year the color is bound to feel dated.

Yellow May Not be Mellow

Also, it’s better to be more cautious with these very vivid Pantone colors because they are, in our experience, attention-getting shades that work better as accents than as the major color in a scheme--unless of course you are a highly skilled professional. Good examples in this Ideal Home UK article.

Subtle yellows and grays. Love it (not our design). Image credit: Simon Scarboro.

Pantone’s yellow – illuminating – is a bright hue that, like most yellows, requires major knowhow to pull off. It’s a major commitment. As a friend once asked when another friend was considering a deep Venetian red dining room, “Hon, do you really have that much to say?” The same goes for yellow. Do you really have that much to say? Most people don’t. In fact, by pairing it with gray, Pantone pretty much admits the necessity of using yellow with a more neutral tone. 

Doesn’t matter that the walls and carpet are beige. Gray is also a neutral and paired with the vibrant yellow contemporary painting by Kari Kroll, the room comes to life.

Yellow is also problematic in the sense that it’s a fussy color that reads differently in rooms facing west than in rooms facing east; in morning light versus dusk. Although the idea of happiness, optimism and energy it conveys is very attractive, yellow can also signal danger (think of the blinking yellow traffic light). 

If you feel you must have yellow, or any other intense, dark, or unusual color, as your dominant color,  make sure to test it on walls facing in all directions and during different times of day. Go to your local hardware store and purchase small sample sizes of paint to create your own large paint chips. You can also buy 12-inch square chips from samplize.com. You’ll be amazed at how different the same color looks in early morning sun and at noon and dusk. 

What do you think? Do you now know how to decorate with yellow and gray? Let us know if you need help!

Do you need help staging a home for sale or need a new look in your home? Call us at 917.543.4590. Email us at dawn@stagedryte.com. Or fill out our contact form.

The Biggest Home Staging Mistakes

If you go online or read home and lifestyle magazines, you will find multiple articles on home-staging dos and don’ts - about the biggest home staging mistakes. Everything you need to know can be summed up in one rule: 

It’s not about you!

What do we mean? It’s very simple. The purpose of home staging is not to showcase your home, your decor, or your lifestyle, but to create fertile ground for potential buyers to imagine their lives in the home. Good staging will give the buyer the germ of an idea for how they could live there. If you fill the space up with too much of your beloved stuff—overly personalized decor or shelves of your family photos—it distracts potential buyers and makes it more difficult for them to create their own vision for the home. 

Believe it or not, many people cannot picture the home looking different than it looks when they see it. If they find something objectionable, they often reject the home, instead of realizing they can easily change that element. Even something easy to switch like a paint color or a window treatment can be a turnoff to a potential buyer. You should try to anticipate design elements that might be too extreme and substitute something less likely to cause a negative reaction.

Staging often has to meld house style and furnishings with today’s clients. This primary bedroom is an example of an antique-filled home that has been morphed to appeal to a younger family. Staging is based on the demographic of the potential buyers, not the owner’s style. Click here.

It’s best to avoid any furniture or decor that’s very personal or specific to your taste. That’s why our advice is not to make your staging about you, your taste, your family, or your life. Make it about the buyer instead. Remember, good staging encourages the potential buyer to begin an emotional connection with the home, which allows him or her to see how her own life could unfold there. This is absolutely what Staged Ryte does every time we stage a home. Here are some specific situations where you might feel tempted to indulge your own taste but shouldn’t:

Don’t choose colors based on your preferences.

You may love deep violet bedroom walls, black curtains, or lots of acid green, but chances are buyers will be less enthused. Take the opportunity to switch out the black, violet, or green for a more neutral color before putting the home on the market. 

At the same time, when we say neutral, we don’t mean the sterile white-on-white interiors that are popular in design magazines. Sure, they look great on Instagram, but a home on the real estate market should look cozy and livable, not like a showroom. Remember the staging is telling the potential buyer a story, one that is a balance between fantasy and reality. And the reality is most people don’t live white-on-white.

The good news on color: painting is one of the best and least expensive fixes in our home-staging toolbox. Still, if a paint job simply isn’t in the budget, embrace the vivid color and try to balance it out with neutral linens, pillows, throws or other accessories.

Want to learn more about decorating with color? Click here.

Don’t assume potential buyers are going to love your pet.

It’s hard to imagine, we know, but many people are put off by evidence of an animal in the home. We understand you love your Fido or Fifi, but you can’t assume your furry friend will charm your potential buyers. Make sure any pet fur, bowls, or toys are out of sight during showings. Your kitty litter box should be clean and, even better, removed from the house. Even better if you can take your pet out of the home as well. If people see a cat, they may imagine they can smell it, even if you can’t. Want more pet tips? Read this Architectural Digest article.

There’s no such thing as too clean, too neat.

Your idea of charmingly lived in might be someone else’s idea of a hot mess. And when it comes to home staging, there is simply no such thing as charmingly lived in. Give up your own idea of what looks comfortable and make your home a neatnick’s dream. Be prepared to do a deep clean (or have a professional do one) and declutter before putting the home on the market. If you do have a pet, be prepared to maintain that level of deep-clean and neatness throughout the showing period. It may be arduous, but it’s necessary.

This kitchen was cleaned and cleared of all clutter with minimal decor added. Keep kitchens fresh.

Not every smell is a good smell.

The home should not only be fresh and clean but should smell that way. Sometimes people are so used to living with a particular odor, they actually cannot smell it. Recently we staged a home that had a lingering smell of damp and mold. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned but the offensive odor remained. At the end of our rope, we popped some apples and cinnamon in the oven. Soon the home smelled like a sparkling autumn day and we could imagine drinking some cider there. The whole scene changed immediately. We just had to make sure the real estate agent was willing to go in before each showing and bake those apples to keep the scent in the air.

Staging a home for a quick sale is a serious commitment – we know! Our entire goal is to do this FOR sellers – to take this burden off their shoulders. Our home staging services are is unique and eye catching. Let us know if you’d like to learn more about how we do this.

Bored? 6 Home Improvement Projects While You Self-Isolate

It’s an In Between Time…

It’s a strange in-between time for many of us. We still need to work but we also have odd pockets of time not knowing what to do with ourselves. Now’s the time to tackle home projects that have been neglected all winter. Review the list below and see what you can do now or over the upcoming weekends. If you need help, or you have a client who wants to get their house on the market soon, you should know that Staged Ryte offers remote staging and design consulting. We don’t have to physically be in a space to assess and direct how a room should be edited and staged. Click the button below to contact us.

6 Home Improvement Projects

1. Yard work: Spring can be gray and damp but remember: sunny days ahead! Get outside and sweep, rake, pick up, clip, and mulch – even if it’s just a few minutes each day. Here’s what we did recently at a soon-to-be-listed home. (If you don’t already follow us on Instagram, please do!)

2. Spring cleaning: Are you spending lots of time gazing out your windows? We are too. Now’s the time to clean them inside and out. Want to know THE BEST WINDOW CLEANER? Combine 2 cups water, ¼ cup white vinegar, and ½ teaspoon Dawn Dishwashing Liquid (we’re biased on this one). Soak a soft brush with the mixture and scrub the window. Rinse with clean water before it dries. It’s also time to vacuum and wash curtains, move furniture and thoroughly clean all areas, clean outdoor furniture, and…you know the drill.

3. Curb appeal: Research paint colors and paint your front door (and possibly garage doors, while you’re at it). Zillow did an analysis of 135,000 photos from listings across the US since 2010 and found on average that houses with black or charcoal gray front doors sold for as much as $6,271 more than expected. Other curb appeal projects: remove overgrown shrubbery and replace; buy and install a new mailbox; plant a tree.

4. Edit: Dig in so you can throw out, recycle and donate:

Scott in action! Transforming bookshelves.

• Clean out closets, dressers, pantry, basement, linen closets, kitchen cabinets and make them neat and tidy;

• Donate books, clothing, furniture, food pantry items, small appliances. Get them ready for drop off;

• Clear out excess furniture: move it to the garage for family or donation;

5. Rearrange your bedroom, living room, office. Browse through Pinterest, Houzz, magazines, etc. and get ideas for fresh ways to rearrange. You can also reach out to us – we can remotely guide you.

6. Create a home office: Have you been working from home? Are you sitting on the corner of your couch? How’s your neck? Shoulders? Lower back? Now’s the time to actually create an ergonomically-appropriate work space. Even if you don’t have an extra room, you can create a mini-office that works. Scope out these areas for a desk and a chair that are comfortable: seating area in your master bedroom; in front of your book shelves where there’s that extra space. And your son’s room…he’s moved to California…time to take it over, especially if it has great light.

Call Staged Ryte to learn about remote staging and design consultation. We want to help everyone keep moving forward.