Occupied Home Staging: How To Shop Your Client’s Home

Selling a home that is still occupied can be a stressful situation –  for the current homeowner, real estate agent, and you, as the home stager. That anxiety can easily be avoided with the right home staging tips in your home staging toolkit. While occupied home staging almost always requires limited or no furniture inventory, it does require the ability to depersonalize a client’s home. It also requires the ability to utilize their current furniture and decor to appeal to a broad spectrum of buyers for a quick and profitable sale.

Below are some tricks to easily “shop” your client’s home. These will help you sift through your client’s possessions, pick the best pieces, and design the best scheme for an occupied home staging.

Furniture

One of the most valuable tips when staging with existing furniture, is to keep things within the scale of the room. Be sure to evaluate the existing furniture within this context before developing your design plan. The wrong scale can turn buyers off. For example, a small room with oversized furniture will make the room feel smaller than it actually is. It may cost you a potential buyer. Stay away from items that are too bulky or make a room feel too cluttered. Minimalism, and a less is more attitude, when staging an occupied home is the best way to go.  

Accessories

This is where you can add in some fun colors and textures. Borrow things like throw pillows from different rooms. Maybe a pillow from the bedroom is actually a better color for the living room decor. Perhaps a storage basket from the bedroom can be utilized to make the bathroom feel more luxurious and organized. You can almost always bet that a client’s home has items that are well-suited elsewhere.

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Additionally, keep patterns minimal. This will avoid unnecessary distractions for buyers. Remember, the main focus for potential buyers is always the space. Even when dealing with existing furniture and decor, the goal is home staging and depersonalization rather than interior design.

Art

Is there a forgotten mirror sitting in your client’s garage or storage room? Bring them out of hiding. Mirrors can be used in rooms that may feel small. They create visual square footage in small space. While in larger rooms, mirrors enhance the already existing square footage.

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Further, borrow art from bookshelves  and bedrooms around your client’s home. Snap up a beautiful print from the office. With them create a gallery wall as a focal point in the living area. Gallery walls create an impactful, cohesive design without needing large-scale art.

At White Orchid Interiors we love sharing the home staging knowledge we’ve garnered over the last decade to help other home stagers grow their businesses. For more helpful home staging tips, check out our blog. For a more in-depth knowledge about best practices to build and maintain a profitable home staging business we’re offering a Summer Business Bootcamp in Las Vegas on July 29.  Learn more about our Bootcamp here.