House staging – how to arrange your furniture to attract buyers

Houses look pretty sad and forlorn without furniture in them, and it’s far easier to sell a house when it looks lived in. So furniture choice and placement will play a large part in the success of your sale.

   
Many of us probably have more furniture than our rooms really need, so when you’re selling it’s important to realise that the best way to lay out your furniture for sale photos and viewings may well be very different to the way you have it arranged for normal, everyday life.
Remembering that the most important thing to emphasise is space, first look at each room in turn and establish whether you could temporarily remove any unnecessary furniture items to make the room feel larger and more spacious. In living rooms, consider removing large coffee tables to free up floor space and make it easier for people to stand in the centre of the room and look around it. In dining rooms, store away a couple of chairs or a large display cabinet. In bedrooms, think carefully about whether the room is large enough for the armchair, three door wardrobe and dressing table, or whether those items actually make the room appear over filled and smaller than it is.
Sometimes you may wish to consider downsizing some of your furniture – the king-size bed that you sleep in may technically fit in your bedroom, but if there’s no room for anything else it’ll make it appear like a very small bedroom. Replacing it with a double bed for the short term will make the room feel more spacious and that will be more attractive to your potential buyer.
Once you’ve edited your furniture, next you need to arrange it carefully. The most important view of a room is that from the entry doorway as that’s the first impression buyers will get when they view the house, so arrange the furniture with that viewpoint in mind. Choose a positive focal point and position furniture to guide the eye towards that focal point.
Anna’s top five furniture placement tips

1. Arrange furniture for the camera when your photos are being taken and if necessary rearrange for viewings, with the view from the entry door being the most important. Don’t think that just because your everyday layout works for you that it’s the best layout for sale time.
2. Don’t let the TV be the star of the show – you’re not selling the TV, you’re trying to sell the room. Move the TV out of the spotlight, even if that one spot is the only place the aerial cable will reach. Is watching tonight’s Corrie really more important than selling your house? And choose instead a focal point that will actually be there once you’ve moved out – a fireplace, a window with a lovely view, an architectural feature. If the room doesn’t have one of these, create a lifestyle focal point with a beautifully-made bed or a conversation area.
3. Avoid sofas or chairs with their backs facing the entry door – they block the view of the room beyond them and look very unwelcoming.
4. Keep the route from the entry door to the window as clear as you can – most people will want to look out of each window so make it easy for them by not placing furniture in their way. Also keep clear any through routes to other rooms.
5. Use furniture to properly define spaces – if a room is classed as a bedroom on your floorplan then it should have a bed in it. Most people feel more comfortable with open plan spaces when the use for each area is clear, so use bookcases, large plants and the way that your other furniture is angled to define the spaces.

This flat for sale in St Ives has an open plan living area that has been nicely defined with the use of a sofa to distinguish between the dining area and the lounge space. However, the furniture is placed very close together leaving very little space for viewers to squeeze through to the terrace, so the room will feel smaller than it is. Removing the coffee would provide more space for the sofas to be rearranged, allowing a larger through route to the dining area and terrace.
The photo of this property listing in Carbus Bay uses furniture very well to draw you in and ask what those chairs in the raised bay are looking at. More photos reveal the stunning views from this window. The furniture placement highlights the star feature of the property with the ideal positioning of the chairs in the bay and the absence of a bold focal point in the rest of the room.