The 5 Home Depot Products Home Stagers Swear By
The art of effective home staging involves reimagining a lived-in (or even a completely unoccupied) space—and doing it as quickly and inexpensively as possible to help sell the home for top dollar.
Whether it’s a multimillion dollar condo in the city or a starter house in the suburbs, a home stager’s job is to help buyers visualize themselves in the home, which means a lot of decluttering (kiss most of your kitchen appliances goodbye) and opening up of the space. To accomplish this, home stagers have an arsenal of tricks up their sleeves, including some very simple products at home improvement stores like Home Depot that can give homes an instant makeover in a pinch.
About to sell your home? Here are five Home Depot products that home stagers swear by.
Basic blue painter’s tape
Blue painter’s tape saves your ceilings and your trim from getting doused in wet paint, but it can also be a handy tool for staging, according to Karen Parziale of The Real Estate Staging Studio.
“I bring in a lot of rugs because they define the space, but I don’t always want to sit there and drag my vacuum cleaner over them all the time. Dabbing painter’s tape takes away the dirt and debris from a rug,” she says.
In addition to giving rugs a quick spruce-up, painter’s tape can keep pillows upright, hold pictures, and can even be used to help her clients visualize how she’ll rearrange a room by marking down where pieces of furniture will be laid out.
Curtain hardware
When looking for a way to add a sense of luxury to a home without busting the budget, Cathy Hobbs—interior designer and finalist on season six of HGTV’s “Design Star”—often turns to Home Depot’s drapery and drapery hardware when staging. Although not every stager uses curtains as an add-on (they’re often something the buyer takes with them), the right window treatment can elongate wall heights and give the home a fresh, crisp appearance.
“When I’m looking to stage a property, a lot of times if we have an out-of-the-ordinary situation, we do have to use a custom workroom and we do have to make drapery custom. But other than that, Home Depot’s drapery and their drapery hardware is my go-to. I just bought some yesterday and I’m not exaggerating!” says Hobbs.
A wow-factor plant
Even if you don’t consider yourself a plant parent, it’s undeniable that plants add a certain sense of liveliness to a space—and they can also boost your mood, which is exactly what you want when a homebuyer is walking through your home (or browsing the photos online). Nitu Patel of Phoenix and Rose Feng Shui, says that a well-placed plant, like this Majesty Palm, is her secret Home Depot weapon.
“Adding vibrant green plants to any home makes it feel more alive and welcoming. I love using a few strategically placed large plants that make a statement and add positive energy to a room,” says Patel.
Paint Scentsations
More powerful than sight is smell—and the last thing you want is for a buyer to think your home smells bad. Enter Paint Scentsations paint additives, which remove pet odors, food odors, and even odors from smoking, says Parziale.
“[The scent] only lasts about three months, which is super perfect for putting your house on the market,” she says.
Outdoor throw pillows
Adding a dash of color is crucial for creating contrast to neutral walls and furniture, and throw pillows are an easy way to do that. To make her dollars go further when adding some color in, Hobbs says that when she’s staging she uses outdoor pillows that she often snags at Home Depot.
“Toss pillows are something that are very expensive, but outdoor pillows come in really bright colors, like yellows, reds, blues, and they’re typically less expensive. Plus, the fabric for staging is very durable,” she says.