Home Styling Tips: How I Stage a New Real Estate Listing

I'm at a new real estate listing today to see what my staging team can do to spruce it about a bit. It looks pretty outdated at the moment, so we are going to come up with some home styling suggestions to make it look more modern.

Once these updates have been completed, the listing agent should be able to sell it for top dollar. This is going to be a challenge, of course, but the home decor styling tips we come up with should speed this sale right along.

Home styling tips

Here are the 7 major home styling tips we ultimately recommended for this home:

1. Fireplace refresh

The fireplace needed a refresh, but my team decided that it wasn’t necessary to redo the entire thing. By simply spray painting all of the brass with black paint, the fireplace suddenly looked a lot more modern, and we were able to keep the original stone in place.

2. Dining room creation

Thanks to the open concept of this house, there used to be a very long living room, and there wasn't really a space for a formal dining set anywhere in the home.

So, I decided to designate a corner of the living room as a formal dining room space. With the addition of a table and chairs, some artwork, and decor, there is now a clear dining room area where a family can gather for meals.

3. Lighting and decor upgrade

This room used to have all dark wood walls and dark wood closets. With new drywall and a fresh coat of paint, it looks more modern. And we added a special chandelier in this room in place of the ceiling fan.

4. Bathroom Reno

There used to be two little mirrors over two little vanities in this big master bathroom. And I felt like it wasn't adequate enough. So I had the agent buy one big mirror.

And look at those lights too. So very sharp. Everything looks awesome.

5. Office addition

Every home nowadays needs a space to Zoom. So we made sure to include a desk in this small bedroom space for all the zoomers.

1. Fireplace redo

The second fireplace used to be brass also, so I felt like it was a little bit too much. And now we've toned it down with black like the first fireplace. So it looks very polished and classy.

2. Painted closets

This home has very mid-century tones, especially with the wood paneling and louvered doors. These closets used to be dark wood, and they got painted white. So the house just feels newer and cleaner.

3. Cohesive decor

When we chose this multi-colored carpet, I thought it was an interesting look. But it was still hard for me to envision how it would work with everything else. But now I'm seeing furniture here, and everything is really cohesive now. I just really like it.

4. Room separation

I love room separation. We actually have an official little sitting area now as opposed to just this empty space like it was before. I like it. It's inviting. It's modern. Before it was not, so we’ve added functionality.

5. Continuous flooring

The flooring was just kind of different flooring all over the place before, so we put new carpet in and now you see more of the same flooring throughout with some additional area rugs.

6. Hardware replacement

We changed out a lot of the door hardware. Again, we went with the black theme for all the hardware, which we also pulled into the light fixtures for a cohesive look.

7. Charm preservation

My first instinct was to paint over this wood panel, but the listing agent told me not to do it. We got to keep the charm. Not everything needs to be painted white. This is a mid-century modern home, so preserving the charm is a nice touch.

8. Sunroom upgrade

Lots of change in the sunroom area. I knew this was going to be some sort of sitting room with pillows. But I love having a little yoga mat in here too. And really it is a perfect place to do a bit of yoga here. You got the bright sun, and it's just about the right size for it. Perfect. I love it.