The Importance of Property Styling

Gone are the days when buyers could look at a home with layers of wallpaper and funky carpets and envision it transformed by their own special touches.

With the popularity of TV shows like Selling Houses Australia and The Block that influence the real estate market, nine out of 10 buyers can’t see past what they’re presented with.
With that in mind, these Top 10 property styling tips will add value to your home when it’s time to sell.

• Property Styling Tip 1

Smart Upgrades

Be smart when investing money in flooring or kitchen cabinets. While it may be tempting to splurge on red lacquered cabinets, you risk alienating your home’s target buyers. If they don’t love it, they will either walk away or make you an offer that factors in the cost to change what you have done.

• Property Styling Tip 2

Freshen Up with Paint

 As one of the least expensive design elements that has the most dramatic impact, paint is one of our top recommendations. By keeping main living spaces in neutral tones of cream, greys or taupes, you will increase your home’s overall saleability.

• Property Styling Tip 3

Dress Up Your Cabinets

For an inexpensive update, we often recommend adding some modern hardware to cabinets. Buyers always appreciate the bling it adds to your cabinetry.

• Property Styling Tip 4

Give Your Rooms a Purpose

Showcase rooms in keeping with their intended purpose. How you live in your home isn’t necessarily how you sell it. Don’t show your formal dining room as an office or playroom – stage it as an eating space so buyers can see the room’s intended function.

• Property Styling Tip 5

Light It Up

Lighting is a key design element that dramatically affects how a buyer feels about a home. Dark rooms, or rooms with harsh overhead lighting, do not show well, and they certainly do not set a mood conducive to wooing potential buyers. Invest in modern table lamps and dining pendants so that each space is both well-lit and welcoming.

• Property Styling Tip 6

Maximize Your Focal Points

Arrange furnishings to show off room features, such as fireplaces, bay windows or builtins. Highlighting these architectural elements adds significant value to key selling spaces.

• Property Styling Tip 7

Add the WOW Factor

Against a neutral backdrop, add key pops of colour in decor accents, pillows and artwork to create stunning spaces that buyers will remember.

• Property Styling Tip 8

Show that You Care

Details matter. Tackle all those little deferred maintenance issues. A squeaky door, or a window with a crack in it, tell a sad story of neglect that will make people wonder what else in the home has been ignored.

• Property Styling Tip 9

Good Photography

Grab the attention of potential buyers by investing in professional photography once your home is show-ready. With over 95 per cent of buyers browsing online first, great pictures are essential to drawing attention to your home.

• Property Styling Tip 10

Hire a Pro

A professional property stylist will customise an action plan for the homeowner to implement, or the home stager can be hired to handle all aspects of getting the property ready for sale. A professional property styling company will discuss all of the above points during the course of their FREE property styling consultation so that homeowners get the best possible property styling advice and direction to maximize their selling experience.


For a FREE Property Styling consultation contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au

 

Property Styling Your Home for Summer Success

The Sydney property market hots up over Summer and  is both a hot and competitive time for selling homes. Summer is a great time to sell, but it’s also the time when the market tends to be flooded with available properties. This being said there are a lot of details that if attended to can keep your home on the competitive edge of the real estate market. 

With the sun out, the weather warm and everything at its most lush and colourful, this is the most important season for curb appeal, outdoor landscaping and attention paid to the general outside appearance of your home. 

Even if you don’t have a backyard full of established trees or a garden that looks as if its been lifted from a magazine, there are certain jobs to be done that will work wonders and will enhance the outdoor appeal of your home.

Northern Beaches Property Styling

- Whatever plants and trees you do have on your property should appear healthy and neatly pruned. As a general rule anything that is dead or dying should be pulled out or removed. There’s nothing worse than seeing decay at a time when all things are meant to be at their peak of life and bloom.

- Keep your lawn in best possible shape. This may mean fertilizing and watering more than you usually would - but the pay off will be a very enticing property.

- Adding a layer of bark mulch around flower beds is a great way to add a finished and fresh look to an outdoor space. It’s also a nice sort of cheat in terms of keeping the weeds away, or at least hiding them!

- A quick and easy way to add colour to your yard in the summer is to plant summer annuals. You might consider creating a greeting path of lined plants or flowers- something that’ll welcome potential buyers and guide them towards your front door. At the door try a colourful pot of flowers, or maybe two, one on each side of the door.

There are still other ideas that can boost the summer sale potential of your home. Think about finding a place to set up a patio set. If you have a deck, this may be the place. But, buyers also like to see alternate outdoor spaces set up in a usable, season specific way. The more you can make your yard appear beautiful and functional, the better.

Northern Beaches Property Styling Sydney

As we move into the interior of your home, the main thing to consider in these summer months is anything and everything to do with light. You want to show off how light and bright your home can be, and if it isn’t so much so, than you want to find some property styling tricks to help it appear so.

Any windows should be cleaned so that they are absolutely glistening and letting as much light through as possible. Also note that in the bright summer months many flaws or hidden dirt will be much more visible. So keep it all clean. You’ll also want to open all blinds and curtains to show off all your homes light capacity.

The walls of your home should be very clean and ideally recently painted in some light and neutral tones. Heavier colours can be oppressive during the summer, so you may need to consider painting if you’re really serious about selling and getting top dollar for your home. 

As always the de-clutter property styling rule applies in the summer as it does during every season. But in this case, be especially sure to remove the remnants of winter- winter coats and boots, and even heavy winter decor. Bring out whatever you can to lighten up the look of your home and keep things in keeping with the summer months.

As for smells, you’ll want to rid your home of any nasty cigarette or pet odours and you might consider spraying the house before showing with a light organic room spray- maybe something like grapefruit or in the light citrus family. 

Keep your landscaping fresh and tidy and the interior of your home clean, light and bright and you’ll be well on your way to the success of a summer sale!

To receive a Free Property Styling Appraisal for your home contact Advantage Property Styling Sydney on 02 9667 1344 

Headboards/ Bed Heads

Adding a headboard to your sleeping space can be the finishing touch to creating a beautiful bedroom.

They come in many different styles and can be used with ensembles or in combination with a bed frame.

Upholstered Headboards can be piped with contrasting fabric, buttoned or scalloped. The fabric you choose, could either be neutral, bold or patterend for a more dramatic effect.

The fabric or colour used on the headboard could co-ordinated with other furniture pieces or accessories in the room. They anchor the room in a way, bringing everything together and creating a focal point.

 

Timber is another option, with natural or white painted, being popular..

Thinking outside the square, screens, re-claimed doors, frames, or even paint can be used to create a beautiful headboard.

So when you’re decorating your bedroom, consider using a headboard. It can really add a touch of luxury to your boudoir!! 

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au

 

 

 

FENG SHUI – Relationships and House Sales

by Anna McCarthy

Advantage Property Styling Sydney

Red roses and pink love hearts are synonymous with expressions of love and romance. Interestingly in the world of feng shui red and pink are also associated with relationships. These colours are considered auspicious in the portion of the home dedicated to harmonious relationships.

Perhaps these colours the world over hold an energy that we react to without really thinking why.

I would like to relate a story to you regarding the colours associated with feng shui and the relationship point of a home and the influence this had over a house sale.

Working as an interior designer and feng shui consultant in my home city of Perth some years ago, I was approached by a client to see “why my house didn’t sell”. My client was a very stylish woman with a beautiful period home in the settled and elegant suburb of Subiaco. As I drove up and regarded the front of the property it was hard to understand why it hadn’t sold. Equally, when I went inside I noted that it was beautifully decorated and the six months of no sale on the market was hard to digest.

I then, however looked at the main bathroom which just happened to be located in the relationship point of the house. It was painted a citrus yellow which wasn’t the pink/red dedicated to this sector in feng shui terms. I mentioned to my client that it would be better to paint the bathroom pink as it was energetically out of balance. She was horrified as she disliked the colour pink and said she would think about. Of course she did nothing and life went on as before, until the day her brother came to stay and she told him the story about my visit and the pink bathroom idea.

What have you got to lose, he said, it’s just a tin of paint; and so she did.

Subsequently the agent who had had the listing all those months ago rang her out of the blue and mentioned he might have a buyer for the property. The house was back on the market and at the first open several groups of people went through and the house was sold for way more than the asking price.

Coincidence you might say, or was it the shift in energy from the colour change that pulled the house into alignment and thus sent out an energetic wave of attraction that prompted the agent to call?

To find out more details about Property Styling or to receive a FREE PROPERTY STYLING CONSULTATION please contact Advantage Property Styling Sydney.

 

 

Cronulla Property Styling Showcase

Cronulla Property Styling Showcase

This was a recent job done by Kate Bonselaar  

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

Set against a spectacular backdrop stretching across Gunnamata Bay, this luxurious state of the art street to beachfront residence is situated in one of South Cronulla's finest and most exclusive areas, considered by many to be the Palm Beach of the South. Epitomising taste and sophistication, this stunning home effectively combines high quality finishes, uncompromising detail and a dynamic clever design that can be enjoyed both inside and out. It features a variety of living spaces and a seamless flow between indoor living and multiple alfesco areas, intuitively designed with effortless entertaining in mind.

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au 

 

Cronulla Property Styling Showcase

Cronulla Property Styling Showcase

This was a recent job done by Kate Bonselaar  

See the full gallery on Posterous

Set against a spectacular backdrop stretching across Gunnamata Bay, this luxurious state of the art street to beachfront residence is situated in one of South Cronulla's finest and most exclusive areas, considered by many to be the Palm Beach of the South. Epitomising taste and sophistication, this stunning home effectively combines high quality finishes, uncompromising detail and a dynamic clever design that can be enjoyed both inside and out. It features a variety of living spaces and a seamless flow between indoor living and multiple alfesco areas, intuitively designed with effortless entertaining in mind.

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au 

 

Property Staging Redfern Showcase

This was a recent job done by Monika Tasonyi and her team of on-site stylists from Advantage Property Styling.

Situated in a quiet leafy street only moments away from Dank Street and all that it has to offer this 3 level renovated terreace has been transformed into a modern urban sanctuary.

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au

See the full gallery on Posterous

Another great result for Advantage Property Styling...

Fantastic Result!!! A recent job done by Monika Tasonyi and the team of on-site stylists from Advantage Property Styling recently styled a property in Penshurst that sold well above the owners expectations, getting over 111 inspections in 3 weeks. 

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

Client Testimonial:

 “just letting you know that we sold the house prior to Auction, everything went to plan and everyone that went through the house loved the furniture it made a huge difference so thank you”

To give your property an Advantage in todays market and a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au 

WHY DOESN’T MY KITCHEN LOOK RIGHT?

THE COLOUR SERIES

WHY DOESN’T MY KITCHEN LOOK RIGHT?

PART TWO 

By Anne McCarthy of  Advantage Property Styling

 

Have you wondered why your brand new kitchen just doesn’t look quite right?

Even after all the time and effort working out the right design for the space, colour matching it to blend and work with the rest of the interior colours, you are disappointed, but not quite sure why.

It often has nothing to do with the design but rather is all about the colour.

The colour selection for your kitchen is not just about co-ordinating the colours back to the rest of the interior of your home. There is one very important rule of thumb – the bench top colour must be a good background for raw and cooked food.

It must not be the same colour as raw meat, cooked shellfish or rotting flesh (I feel sick already, sorry about that). These colours include shades of red, pink, peach and yellow. If your bench top is in this range, any food you put on it will look less appetising and less appealing. This actually makes perfect sense when you stop to think about it.

Some years back there was a trend towards bench tops in very dominating colours which didn’t work particularly well. An interior designer friend of mine and I got together to work out exactly what made a good kitchen and why. This was the formula or rule of thumb we arrived at with regard to bench tops (after pouring through all our laminate sample books and putting every conceivable scheme you can think of together) and one I have found absolutely works and takes a lot of the guess work out of decision making. As designers we always want to push that little bit further but in a case like this it is a restraint worth remembering however tempting to stray.

Look to the neutrals in nature for clues in selecting the right colour for your bench top. The colours need to be taken from the foundation of the landscape i.e. trees, stone, rocks, earth and beach sand.

These wonderfully solid forms are the basis for all our building needs and the perfect backdrop for food. This is why stone, reconstituted stone products and timber work so well.

See how well food will look on tones of grey, beige, white, off white and shades of green and brown. Which colour you choose will depend on the rest of your interior and whether you want to achieve a more traditional or modern style for your kitchen.

There are so many exciting products available now to create just the look you want. The timber look laminates have improved enormously and can now be convincingly used with confidence to add warmth and style. If you do use one of these laminates, make sure the colour and figuring relate to the existing interior e.g. a light Beech is not going to work well with a rich dynamic décor. You would need something darker and more heavily figured. Remember what I talked about in my previous article on Colour and Style in Harmony, this is the same application of this balance.

We can spend a lot of money on a kitchen so it needs to be good money not bad money.

Good money is a stone or reconstituted stone bench top – it wears and performs well and is an excellent selling point when you move on.

Bad money is using the colours mentioned before as permanent fixtures – they won’t give you the best result, will be expensive to change and certainly not a draw card for a home buyer down the track.

Enjoy the accent colours in your decorative display pieces on your bench top or shelves. With the delightful variety in homewares available, you will always find just the piece to add the drama or elegance that peronalises your kitchen.

Part Three – White is just White!

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au

Another happy client for Advantage Property Styling...

 

Here is a recent testimonial from a very happy Advantage Property Styling Client - well done to all the team involved.

Dear Kate

Please excuse the delay in not writing sooner.

I simply want to say thank you for an excellent job in styling our property in Goodlet Street Surry Hills.

As you know I was somewhat sceptical in regards to styling, but when I saw the photos and visited the property I was amazed.

The property looked great and greatly assisted us in maximising our selling price.

To all involved than you very much.

Kind Regards

(Name With-held - on file)

See the full gallery on Posterous

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au

 

Crows Nest Property Styling

Crows Nest Property Styling

 

This was a recent job done by Anne McCarthy and her team of on-site stylists from Advantage Property Styling.

Offering exceptional convenience and lifestyle appeal this townhouse is only moments to Mosman village and its shops, cafes and transport.  This beautiful semi is perfectly positioned to North Sydney Parks and cafes, with generous proportions throughout a modern contemporary living space has been created with superb attention to detail.

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au

 

Mosman Property Styling

Mosman Property Styling

This was a recent job done by Anne McCarthy and her team of on-site stylists from Advantage Property Styling.

Offering exceptional convenience and lifestyle appeal this townhouse is only moments to Mosman village and its shops, cafes and transport.  

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

For a FREE Property Styling consultation please contact Advantage Property Styling on 02 9667 1344 or email us on info@advantagestyling.com.au