A “focal point” is an aspect of the room that the eye is going to travel to first. Every room should have a focal point and only rarely is it naturally there as part of the architecture in a room, other than windows (a fireplace, for example, would be an architectural focal point). In vacant living rooms, the two natural focal points areas are typically a fireplace (if one exists) and the main window in the room. Depending on the time of year or what you are trying to achieve (staging to sell or just better living in your space), you can focus on one or the other of these natural focal points (or both, if it is a large enough room), or you can create a focal point of your own through furniture placement and appropriately hung art work. This is something a stager or interior designer or decorator can help you with if you struggle with creating it on your own.

In staging, we always either highlight the natural focal point or create one in each room in order to give the eye a place to rest and establish visual interest in the space. A focal point can easily be created via the furniture arrangement and the way that the décor and art are placed in the room.  With staging properties for sale, there is often the added need to create “purpose” in a room and highlight the optimal furniture arrangement for buyers to see how they would live in the space.

To greatly enhance a ho-hum focal point in a room, consider using strategically placed lighting and dramatic artwork to make the area stand out and draw the eye towards it. For example, many newer homes and condos have gas fireplaces in the living rooms but they lack any sort of fine architectural detail to make them a dramatic aspect of the room. Placing one very large (scale appropriate, of course) piece of art over the fireplace, along with track lighting directed to specifically highlight the art, can make a big difference and help transform the room.

Other ideas for creating focal points in rooms where they otherwise don’t exist include using a beautiful tri-fold screen to create “texture” and visual interest in a corner or along a blank wall. Adding some type of greenery (a tall tree or potted floor plant) and an up-light can further enhance this look.

If you are a fan of HGTV’s “My First Place” then you will be interested to know that Red House Staging & Interiors has been selected to design some of this season’s “reveals” that are currently being filmed in the DC area.  “My First Place” follows first-time homeowners on the journey of selecting, negotiating and purchasing their first home.  At the end of every episode, the homeowners walk into their newly purchased home and unexpectedly, find one room furnished and accessorized as a surprise from the show’s producers.  Red House is excited and honored to have been chosen by HGTV; and we love having the opportunity to create some excellent rooms for the new homeowners.  The job presents the creative challenge of having to make a big visual impact on a very tight budget and Red House relishes a great challenge.  We hit the ground running and completed two reveals last week, with fantastic success.  We had a blast working on the projects and look forward to the opportunity to do more!

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To get this property into shape, the many boxes and piles that been lining the walls were moved into storage, creating space for the staging to occur. Red House brought in a loveseat and queen bed for the Master Bedroom.  The rest of the condo was furnished with the owner’s items. The seller’s art was removed and Red House provided some inexpensive, but nice looking pieces, to replace them.  When in need of art, you do not have to purchase works of framed art with large price tags.  For example, we purchased a used canvas for $1 off of Craigslist.org and then stapled some decorative fabric to the canvas, thus creating a unique, inexpensive piece of art for the living room. The staging came together in a couple of hours and turned out beautifully.

The lesson in this staging is to understand that living in and preparing a home to be sold are very different.  In this example, potential buyers were not able to envision this property as their own.  With Red House Staging’s assistance, the condo was transformed into a space that anyone could see themselves living in comfortably.

Living Room Before

Living Room After

Bedroom Before

Bedroom w/ artwork after

Living Room Before

Living Room After

Red House Staging helped another seller achieve major success with a quick and profitable sale! For this recent job, Red House was called upon to help a couple, expecting their first child and needing to make a quick sale to move out of the city to be closer to their jobs before the baby arrived. The couple decided to forego using a Realtor®, intending to do the heavy work involved with selling it on their own. FSBO (for sale by owner) properties generally do not sell as fast as homes represented by a Realtor® and therefore they were facing a bigger than normal challenge in this market. They knew they needed help in getting their home up to standard with the surrounding competition on MLS and called Red House for a consultation and assistance with pre-Open House preparation.
Red House’s capable head stager, Tracy Griffin, had to use her expert skills not only in staging the property but also leading the nervous, comforted-by-clutter, homeowner through the staging process. The woman of the home was most comfortable surrounded by clutter and having her possessions off-balance. She was also soothed by eccentric items placed throughout her home, not to mention tons of competing patterns in the carpets, throws and pillows. Tracy had to put on her psychologist hat and assist the homeowners through the process of “letting go” of some long-held habits in order to create balance and flow in their staged home. Luckily, the seller’s spouse supported Tracy in this endeavor and was a great source of comfort to his wife as items were packed away and reconfigured throughout the home.
The most important task of staging is to maximize the equity of a home.
This concept was needed to convince the homeowners to paint the exterior of their home, which was purple. The argument the client used for keeping the purple exterior was “that it helped maintain the character of the neighborhood”. While the purple color may have appealed to their neighbors, it lacks the broad appeal needed to reach a wide demographic of buyers and Tracy reminded the sellers that since they are moving, it is not their job to please the neighbors but rather to maximize their profit on the sale of their home. Once everyone was on the same page with this concept, the home’s exterior was painted a lovely neutral shade of grey that still complimented the neighboring homes but presented much better for marketing purposes.
Inside the home there was another painting issue to resolve. The clients had an office with dark, olive green walls. Because time was of the essence and the sellers’ budget did not allow for hiring professionals to come in and repaint, Tracy suggested that the clients purchase an enormous mirror and hang it opposite the window in the room. This added much needed, immediate light to the room for only $50. It was a much less expensive solution both in time and money for the homeowners. Mirrors are a great means to open up a small space as well as brighten a dark one. However, if the room is significant, i.e. a master bedroom, painting would be the preferred technique to lighten and create spaciousness.
For the website the sellers built to market the property, they took very technical photos. For example, one photo’s purpose was to show how deep the home was to potential buyers. Though this photo did show the house’s depth, it did not present as visually appealing to the eye. Tracy convinced the sellers to take new pictures that instead showed the emotional appeal of the home to potential buyers. Homes are purchased on emotion and therefore the marketing photos must be emotionally “delicious” to the buyer’s eye. So instead , Tracy had the sellers take a photo of the home’s lovely living room fireplace, newly staged, where you can imagine yourself pulling up a chair on a cold evening or drinking coffee on a bright Sunday morning. It is important to remember that by staging a home, you are setting the property up as a product that is selling a lifestyle to potential buyers.
So, after some hand-holding and psychological steering, the home was staged by the sellers themselves, based on the extensive list of action items and advice provided by Red House and it went on the market on a recent, Friday morning in May. The owner received thirty-five calls that morning and four offers by Sunday. Incredible! The sellers greatly decreased the time the home was on the market (barely a weekend!) as well as their bottom line by professionally staging the home and making some difficult, but wise, decisions about how they presented it.
Please check back with us in the near future. More RHS tales and tips are coming and we are excited to share them with you. As always, your comments are welcome and appreciated. Have a wonderful day.
The Red House Staging Team

We will use this forum to post news and updates as well as post entries regarding our latest projects. We hope to use this as a forum to keep our clients and the general public updated on staging tips, staging in the news, and Red House announcements, as well as a venue to highlight properties we’ve recently staged. It will be a great way to post before and after photos, announce our exciting statistics and give a shout out to our clients and realtors who use our services.

We’d love to start a Staging Q& A section on the blog at some point, but in the meantime, if you have a general question regarding staging or interior design, please feel free to type your question in the comment field of any of our posts.

Happy Staging,

Lyric & Tracy