By Justin M. Riordan, Spade and Archer Design Agency(link is external)

When selling a house, small rooms can lead to big problems. Staging can be the key to making a small room look functional and help entice buyers to put an offer on your property.

Living Rooms – Proving your living room can fit a full size sofa is of upmost importance. A love seat is an immediate red flag for most buyers as one cannot lie down on a love seat. To make a full size sofa fit in your small space opt out of using end tables. Instead consider floor lamps, which can be pressed right up against the side or back of the sofa. By removing the end tables, you can reduce the overall space needed for the sofa set-up by up to 48 inches.

Photo credit: Spade and Archer

Bedrooms – Scale is the key here. Use the largest bed possible that still allows all the doors in the room to swing freely. Avoid pressing the side of the bed up against the wall. Instead, opt for a nightstand on each side of the bed. Use a “Hollywood” metal frame under the mattress with a wall-mounted headboard. By eliminating the footboard and side rails, the overall size of the bed is greatly reduced while still providing a good reference point on the scale of the room. A bedroom that could fit a full size bed with a bulky frame headboard and footboard can easily fit a queen with a metal frame and wall-mounted headboard.

 Photo credit: Urban Outfitters

Never, ever use a platform bed in a small room. By lowering the bed and adding the platform, you actually can end up making the room feel smaller. This is most certainly not what we are looking for here.

Dining Rooms – We all know the kitchen is the heart of the house. If that is true, then dining rooms are the lungs. The kitchen is useless if there is no place to sit down and eat the wonderful food made there. The staging of the dining room is highly dependent on the size of the house. If a house has three bedrooms, you must include an eating area for a minimum of six people. Look at it this way: With three bedrooms, the potential buying family will have two adults and two children. They will also want to be able to entertain at least two other people at a time. Two kids plus two parents plus two guests equals six seats.

Photo credit: Spade and Archer

The key here is using a dining set that is small enough so that people can walk around the set once it is in place. Using armless dining chairs makes this issue easier to deal with. Armless chairs can be placed three on one side and three on the other verses two on each long side and one captain at each short side. A larger piece of art can be placed on the wall over the table to anchor the dining set. This set-up would be similar to a booth layout in a restaurant.

Bathrooms – Most bathrooms are small. It is the very nature of bathrooms. They tend to be the smallest rooms in the house. The least expensive way to deal with a small bathroom is to paint the entire bathroom white with white fixtures, linens, and accessories. By removing contrasts from the room, it simply appears clean and functional. A single piece of colorful art placed preferably above the toilet can add a single focal point for the room and thus pull the eye away from the size of the bathroom and toward the art. Adding lots of color and contrast to any bathroom will serve to make it feel smaller and dirtier. Do not, ever, paint any bathroom green, yellow, brown or red. (Trigger warning… this is gross.) These are the colors of mold, urine, feces and blood, not the things we want to think about when we are shopping for our new bathroom in our new home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Justin Riordan, LEED AP, is founder of Spade and Archer Design Agency(link is external) based in Portland, Ore. As the creative energy behind Spade and Archer, Riordan fuses his formal training as an architect with his natural design savvy to create beautiful and authentic spaces for clients. Prior to opening Spade and Archer in 2009, Riordan practiced interior architecture and interior construction for 12 years, bringing an esteemed skillset and diverse background to home staging. Since founding Spade and Archer, he has personally prepared more than 2,100 homes for market.

One positive thing that appears be to happening in the time of coronavirus sheltering /staying in place orders is that people are engaging in more home hobbies and creative activities that they may have not had time for before due to social activities. One can see a lot of articles about staying creative or why the quarantine can make one more creative.  One activity that Americans apparently have spent more time and money on is gardening, based on retail sales and employment data.  This is a good time for homeowners because gardening, yard improvements, and minor home renovation or simple do-it-yourself projects (deck) improve curbside appeal and reflect the kind of care and maintenance that homeowners put into their homes, both external and internal. Attractive gardens, a clean yard, freshly coated fences, mended pathways will make a home attractive to buyers, in the time of and after the coronavirus social distancing period.

Building materials/gardening store sales and employment are up compared to retail trade

Retail sales data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that retail sales of building materials, garden equipment, and supply dealer stores (NAICS 444) increased 1% in March from February and was up 7% on a year-over-year basis. In comparison, retail sales and food services fell 9% on a month-over-month basis and 6% on a year-over-year basis.  Other industries that had higher sales in March were grocery stores (+27% m/m and +29% y/y); health and personal care stores (+4% m/m, +4% y/y), and general merchandise stores that includes department stores and other general merchandise stores (6% m/m, 7% y/y).

In 2019, Americans spent nearly $380 billion (retail sales) on building materials, garden equipment, and supplies. Building materials and supply stores (paint and wallpaper stores and hardware stores) sold $334 billion (so $41 billion is garden supplies).

While brick-and-mortar retail stores have shed about 300,000 jobs since January 2017, the employment in brick and mortar stores has remained relatively flat at 1.3 million. In March 2020, it is one of the few sectors that posted year-over-year employment gains, of 11,500 jobs. However, employment did fall by nearly 4,000 from February to March.

Impact of landscaping on home values

What’s the impact of projects that improve a home’s curb appeal on the likelihood of selling a home and home values? According to NAR’s 2018 Remodeling Impact Report: Outdoor Features,  “74% of REALTORS® suggested sellers complete a landscape maintenance program before attempting to sell, and 17 percent said the project most recently sealed a deal for them, resulting in a closed transaction.” The cost in 2018 was $3,000 and 100% was recovered when the home was sold.

Source: NAR’s 2018 Remodeling Impact Report: Outdoor Features