If you’re selling your home and want to sell your house fast, you need to know how to stage a kitchen.
What do you look for when shopping for a home? Are you craving a big backyard with tons of space for the kiddos to run around in and a nice fence for privacy and to hedge in your dogs? Do you need lots of windows for natural light to cheer up your mornings?
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Or, are you like me and look for a spacious kitchen that will be the center of your home where you can gather with friends and family around delicious food?
As in, a great kitchen is totally a non-negotiable.
Chances are that you are not only craving a fantastic kitchen space, but it’s a must have on your list. Well, guess what? You and I aren’t the only ones.
Home Staging A Kitchen
In fact, the kitchen is now considered to be the most important room in the home. So much so that many homeowners are shelling out big bucks for kitchen renovations to turn a modest kitchen into a workspace where Gordon Ramsey would feel right at home. These renovations don’t come cheap though, one estimate has them running anywhere from $50,000 and $150,000.
Because of this new trend, the kitchen is a place where you definitely want to pay special attention and make attractive and inviting when staging a home to sell. But, you don’t have to have a huge renovation budget to accomplish this, in fact you don’t have to remodel your kitchen at all!
With a few simple tricks, you can stage your kitchen and have it look and feel cozy and inviting for potential homebuyers! Here are my top five tips for staging a kitchen to sell.
5 Tips to Stage A Kitchen
Keep it clean. I mean, clean the kitchen.
First things first, clean that kitchen like you have never cleaned it before. I’m talking walls, floors, cabinet doors, inside of cabinets, the oven, the fridge, the light fixtures, baseboards, the ceiling.
Scrub-a-dub-dub everything you can see and everything you can’t Make it sparkle and make it shine.
If this feels daunting it might be worth hiring a professional to come in and clean for you. Oftentimes hiring someone to clean can be very affordable, and they also have fantastic cleaning chemicals and cleaning tricks and tips that make it easier for them to do the job than it is for you to do it yourself.
Declutter Your Kitchen
- Remove small rugs and stow them elsewhere.
- Take everything off of the refrigerator except a few attractive magnets
. - Go through your pantry and toss out that bag with just the ends of a loaf of bread in it and those fifteen thousand packets of takeout ketchup.
- Un-junk the junk drawer.
- Counters should be clear with only a few exceptions (see the last tip of this list).
- You want to declutter the space in order to make it look as large and clean as possible, while still making it look inviting.
.Make Your Kitchen Smell Good
Consider how your kitchen smells. Does last night’s fish curry still linger in the air? Is the garlic from your famous bolognese sauce still dominating the dining room?
Better yet, ask a friend (one of the brutally honest ones) to come over and sniff around. She’ll be more likely to smell your house since your brain has already turned off the smells from your own home.
If you are in a pinch, open the windows, run an exhaust fan and spray an air deodorizer
to get rid of food smells. A better option is to dine out a day or two before a big home showing to avoid stubborn cooking odors.
You can also try out one of these DIY home scenting tips from my post on how to make your home smell amazing, or try the old realtor trick of sticking a batch of cookies into the oven to get some delicious smells to warm up the space.
Organize Your Kitchen
Anything that is inside your cabinets needs to be super neat and organized.
I know, I know, why would they look inside your cabinets? I don’t know why, but trust me, they will, so make it pretty. I’m talking all of the coffee cup handles turned the same way, alphabetize your spices and line them up in pretty little rows
. Stack the plates neatly and remove any random ones that don’t match with a set
.
Seriously. This is a must-do when staging your house to sell.
Make Your Kitchen Inviting
Nothing should be on the counters except a few decorative canisters, a nice simplecanister
of cooking utensils, a few nice appliances such as a fancy coffee pot
(scrubbed and buffed till it shines) and/or a Kitchenaid mixer
, and a decorative handsoap
. A lovely live plant or carefully arranged vase of flowers can add a delightful pop of color and warmth as well.
There you have it! It is easy to stage your kitchen beautifully and invitingly for your potential home buyers. Happy staging!
