The way your home is cleaned and styled is important and highly beneficial to selling it, especially during a traditionally slower real estate season like winter. Adding some holiday decorations into your home during the Christmas season can also be beneficial. Here are some tips for cleaning and decorating your home to get it sold in the holiday season.
De-clutter first 
This is always step one in preparing your home for showing to buyers. You want to live on only the bare necessities until you have a solid offer on your home. Pack up anything that you do not absolutely need, you want to have only what will showcase your home in the best and most neutral light to appeal to a larger number of buyers. Pack up personal items like picture frames, knick–knacks, extra clothes in closets, and maybe anything that has just been sitting in storage.
Clean, Clean, and Clean Again
Before re-arranging/styling/staging and then decorating you want to give your home a very thorough and deep cleaning. This will set the stage for staging and decorating. A dirty home is a huge turn off to buyers especially if there is a funny odor to accompany it. Start preparing your home to be shown with a deeply clean foundation. If you can afford it, it is well worth the investment to hire professional cleaning services, especially where your grout and carpets are concerned.
Related: Tricks to Help Your Bathroom Sell Your Home
Now It’s Time to Decorate
A few holiday touches can go a long way to help warm the home and put buyers in a feel-good mood that will help them to fall in love with your house. Follow these staging tips for holiday decorating and you are all set for buyers to come to see and make an offer on your home.
- Less is More: You want buyers to be impressed with your home, not distracted by a large number of decorations. Keep things to a minimum and only decorate areas that will help draw the eye to certain features and highlight them. Keep the giant inflatable Santa that usually hangs out on the roof tucked away this year, and dream of how cute he will look on the roof of your new home next year.
- Complement Existing Décor: You want the holiday décor to help elevate the existing color palette already in your home. So if you have warm colors like browns and earth tones on your walls go with traditional golds, forest greens, and deep reds. If you have cool tones like gray try out silvers, whites , and blues to bring in a frosty sparkle.
- Be Conservative with the Tree: It may be hard to do this one, because we all have our tree traditions that we love. Make sure the size of your tree is not overpowering to the room it is in, and that it is not overcrowded with ornaments unless they all have a common theme. A tree is a major focal point to any holiday décor you don’t want it taking up too much space in the room or it can make the room feel small. You also don’t want to overfill the branches with baubles unless you have a themed tree because it can feel chaotic and even messy to someone that does not hold the ornaments in sentimental value. So if you have a ton of tree decorations think about only displaying those that hold the most favorite memories this year.
- Bake Some Cookies: No one can resist the smell of freshly baked cookies, especially at Christmas. Invite buyers in with the warm and nostalgic smell, and maybe even leave a plate out with a “thank you please take one” note to add an extra special touch.
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