What you choose to hang on your walls says a lot about the person you are—your likes, favorite colors, political beliefs, your children’s entire life in pictures, basically your personal sense of style. All of which is exactly the opposite of what you want your walls to say to a potential buyer. While you don’t necessarily need to strip your walls of all personality, it’s a good idea to check yourself when it comes to the artwork and photography around your home.
Here’s a good idea of what you should include and what needs to go to property stage your home to sell.
Brightly colored frames
It’s not just what goes into the frame but the frame itself that can be a problem especially if you have a gallery wall. In order to keep a gallery wall organized and fresh keep all the frames consistent in silver, gold, white or black. A mixture of no frames with frames is also a nice look for a gallery wall.
Personal photographs
While buying or selling a home is a very personal and emotional transaction, ironically if you want to sell your home, you need to remove yourself from the equation. You literally want to remove every trace of your personal self from the space, especially personal photographs.
Removing your photographs makes your home cleaner, sharper, less cluttered, and it also does two other important things for you. It allows the buyer to see themselves there. It also doesn’t distract them from what they came to see—the house.
Because buyers are looking for reasons to buy or not buy a home, they can get caught up in the personal connections they have to a seller. Do they have kids the same age? Were they both in the military? They can get caught up focusing on you rather than the home.
Once all of your personal photographs are gone, now you can start with a blank slate and figure out where you want to hang your existing art and possibly buy new pieces to avoid any large blank spaces.
Artwork near the window (or another major design feature)
It’s not always a matter of what artwork you put up, it’s where you choose to display it. Hanging photographs or artwork near architectural features of the home, like windows or arches, can take away a buyer’s attention from where it needs to be.
Hang art to draw the eye to a feature of the home, draw the eye away from something that isn’t ideal, or keep the buyer moving to the next area. For instance, if the room features a large window with a beautiful view, don’t hang art to compete with that. Let the home sell itself. But if we are trying to direct a buyer to head a particular way down a hallway, we might hang a mirror or artwork on one side or the other to naturally draw them in, creating a flow, almost like a trail of breadcrumbs.
Artwork that’s too personal or political
Don’t make a political statement with your art. If your artwork is political in nature or religious, edgy, provocative or scary, it’s best to go ahead and pack it up for the new home to remove any potential issues for the buyers. You want buyers to envision themselves in your home so give them the space for their own opinions and beliefs.