How to dress your home for sale to appeal to families

If you’re living alone or you’re an empty-nester couple, trying to entice families can be tough. Here’s how to appeal to those you want to most.

When you’re selling your home, you’ve really got to be strategic and get into the mind of the buyer. If your major market segment is families, there are some things you can do to make your property more attractive to parents with children.

Remember, people want to see a cosy home, not a display home. Even then, display homes these days are almost over-styled, as companies know people want that ‘lived-in’ look. Here are my tips for getting it just right:

Personal photos

Step one is to declutter your personal items. It’s hard to strike a balance between cosy and clinical, but one of the ways you can achieve the right amount of personality is with pictures.

There’s a lot of talk around family photos and what you should and shouldn’t display. Here are my rules around it:

• Take away family photos. You can still have photos of people, just not glamour shots or the family get-togethers.
• Travel photos with one person in them are fantastic and totally fine to display. The emphasis is on the destination over the faces.

Eating spaces

In your dining area, you’ll want to give the illusion that your home can accommodate people. Whether that be entertaining space, or in your dining room.

If you have a separate dining room, make sure your dining table has six chairs around it. The reason behind this is that if you have a little round table with four chairs, people might think they won’t fit in the space and can’t visualise their family living there.

Colour palette

My advice is to stick to a muted version of your style. Don’t go gung-ho on any particular ‘look’. People like to see a small part of a style, but they don’t want to a stage set; as especially parents of younger children want to see themselves relaxing in the space.

Your choice of colour can be the most polarising thing to buyers. Sure, paint can be changed, but again, it’s a fine balance between going too neutral or colourful, and still showing off the property. When styling to sell, if you’re trying to please everyone you end up pleasing nobody.

If you’re refreshing paint, neutral colours are a good way to go, but you don’t want to be too neutral that all of your walls, furniture and furnishings are the same off-white, beige or grey colour.

By the same token, bold colours, think reds, turquoise, yellows and oranges can be very overwhelming to families – and buyers in general – if you don’t get the right balance. Do them in small pops if you have neutral walls through rugs, cushions and artwork… and if you have a bold wall, pair it back with plain furniture.

Practical decorating

Families need function. You need to make sure your layout works for them – and if it’s unclear, you can prompt them to imagine how a certain space can be used by decorating with working things.

For example, in the kitchen, this may mean using bowls of fruits, utensils, a mortar and pestle and chopping boards to show functionality.

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