Decorating For The Holidays When Selling Your Home

With the holidays here, you might be thinking about getting into a festive spirit with decorations. If you are putting your house on the market, you might be wondering the best strategy to decorate your home and get it in shape to sell — or what agents call staging. While there are some specific strategies to keep in mind when staging your home, you can add a holiday element to the mix. Before you start stringing your holiday lights, consider some of these tips. 

Assess your space

If you are the kind of family that goes all out for holiday decorations, this year you may want to scale it back a bit. When it comes to selling your home, you don’t want your decorations to take over, and that means assessing your space and being sure you still have room to show off your home’s best features, especially in the living room. Think accessorizing, instead of having decor be the focal point of your room. That might mean going for a smaller tree, and focusing on a few key locations like a staircase, or mantelpiece, instead of filling every corner with holiday decor. A couple of thoughtfully arranged candles on your dining table along with some greenery and a tree in white or gold can make an impact without taking over your home.

Let there be light

Natural light is an asset when selling a home, and one element to keep in mind when decorating is maintaining natural light as much as possible. The last thing you want is a tree or decorations that block essential natural light from a window or put your living room in shadows or make it seem smaller than it is. As you plan the placement of your holiday decor, make sure that light and airiness in your home are at the top of your priority list. 

Color coordinate

Staging involves keeping your home’s colors coordinated and this rule still applies when decorating your home for the holidays while preparing to sell it. That means holiday red and green are out, and neutral colors like white, gold, and gray are in. You may not need to completely replace your decorations, you might be able to just focus on one color from what you already have and go from there. Silver, white, and gold can be one palette that can work in almost any home.

Keep sounds and scents in check

Scented candles can create a festive spirit, but when you have people visiting your home for an open house, you’ll want to avoid strong scents and stick with natural scents like evergreen, or a natural potpourri. With allergies and scent sensitivities, the last thing you want is to have potential buyers sneezing or needing to step outside for fresh air. The same goes for motorized or singing decorations to avoid catching your would-be buyers off-guard or surprising them with your seemingly harmless holiday decor. 

Just because you are selling your house doesn’t mean that you have to eliminate your holiday decor completely. You’ll just want to be thoughtful about how you decorate and be sure that you don't go too over-the-top to keep your house as the center of attention, instead of your holiday decor.