Removing personal pictures from your home is one of the first and easiest things you’ll do when staging your home for sale. Some people wonder why remove pictures when staging your home? There are three reasons you want to remove personal pictures when your home is on the market, and there are two easy fixes if you are worried about moving pictures making home staging harder.
Did you see the invitation to our Organizing Game Night? If you want to refresh your home this summer, whether you are moving or not, we have a new, fun motivating way to help you get organized. We hope to see you this Tuesday night. Register right now for this week’s game night.
Why Remove Pictures When Staging Your Home
Recently I showed you a home that we staged. It sold within a week for over the listing price, which is very common for staged homes. Did you notice any family photos in the after pictures? Here’s why there were none.
1. The buyer can’t see themselves in your staged home if all they see is you.
Leave room for the buyer to imagine their family, not yours, in the home. First impressions happen very quickly, and it’s easier for a potential buyer not to have to erase an image of your family so they can picture themselves at home. Only about 10-20% of buyers can visualize the changes they want to make to your home. Don’t stress out the other 80% who can’t.
2. Keep the buyer focused on the property, not on you.
Buyers love to wander over to your wall or table of family pictures to see if they know you. It’s only human; we want to connect. They’ll want to see if they know you from high school, if you look like them, or if your kids are about the same age as their kids. Any time they spend trying to make these connections with you, they aren’t making the connection with the house, and they need to connect with the house to fall in love and make an offer.
3. Keep your family safe when home staging.
Safeguard your family. Buyers are strangers, after all, and there is no reason that you need to let strangers know how old your kids are, what activities they participate in, and what your family likes to do in your free time.
2 Easy fixes for removing your pictures when staging
Swap the picture, not the frame
Most sellers don’t want to remove family photos because they think if they moves the frames, they’ll need a new paint job. Not so. One easy trick is to replace family photos with landscape art that goes with your decor. In this shot, you can see that the homeowner switched up a hallway montage that formerly featured her kid’s pictures, and now it features some peaceful seaside shots. Still pretty, still framed, but now something that draws you through the space to the next beautiful room, instead of slowing you down in the short hallway.
Clean instead of Re-painting
Have you used magic erasers? (affiliate link) Made popular by the Mr. Clean brand, they do a fabulous job of cleaning painted walls with just a swipe. If you do need to remove frames from the wall, a tiny amount of spackle (affiliate link) and a little swipe with a magic eraser is usually all you need to freshen the space where your pictures used to hang.
If your home is going on the market, can you make a case now to remove pictures when staging your home?
Not moving anytime soon? Go the other direction, and enjoy a photo gallery wall.
