Staging a house is the art of making it look nice for tenants or before a sale. Staging highlights the use of each room and shows off each room in their best light. You don't need a lot to stage effectively, but repainting is an absolute must. A fresh coat of paint makes a home feel new and luxurious for both touring potential tenants and future home buyers. Whether you are renting or selling your investment property, repainting is essential for making your home feel new, modern, trendy, and an inviting blank slate for the next resident's dream of a lifestyle.
How do you pick new colors from season to season? How do you pick the right scheme or palette to really make each home pop? Today, we're here to share five tips you can use today to help choose the right color scheme for staging and lock down your repainting plan.
1) Look at Color Schemes in Action
Never pick a color just by what it looks like on the swatch. Wall and accent colors play through a room very differently than they do on a little glossy card, and what you're really looking for is a feel to the color combinations once they're up on the wall.
So instead of looking at the cards, look at examples of painted rooms and homes that you like. Tour models houses and open houses to see how color is being used in your area. And, of course, you can look at the millions of home decor photos online to give yourself an idea of how you want the palette to come together.
There are several online tools that allow you to use images to pull the approximate names of the paint colors used to help you build a few concept-palettes from photos.
2) Choose Your Base Hue
What color do you want to use as your base? Even whites have a hint of color, and that hint can shape the way a home looks and feels when tenants or buyers step inside. Faintly yellow or brown homes tend to feel warmer, while faintly blue homes have a cool, crisp feel. In the last few years, blue-gray schemes have been highly possible with bold grays contrasting gently blue whites.
The right color scheme for your home should depend on what you like, what's popular in your area, and what makes the house look best. Remember that the undertone will be very clear when painted onto an entire wall. When choosing lighter colors, you can look at the darkest color on the swatch to tell what the undertone color really is.
3) Color Flow from Room to Room
The most beautifully painted rooms are the ones that have subtle color changes from one room to the next. You may want your living room to be a near-white while your dining room is a bold, moody gray, for example. Even tiny shifts in shade from room to room gives the home a feeling of depth and subtle color coordination.
So start in the room you have the clearest vision of, light or dark, and choose your color flow from there.
4) Test Colors on Poster Board
Test pots and test swatches of color on the walls can be a life-saver in making final decisions. After all, you want to know what the paint looks like dry on your wall, not just on a little card. However, painting test swatches on the wall isn't always the right answer.
One clever way to do it is to use a poster board for each test color. Write the color name on the back, then tape the poster down and apply two coats. Always apply two coats, just as you will the wall soon. Once dry, you can use these painted poster boards held up to each wall to see what you like best.
Not are you not painting directly on the walls, but the swatches come with their own labels to avoid confusion.
5) Add Color-Pop Last with Accessories
Finally, don't worry about your accenting pop-colors. When painting the walls and trim, you want to keep it neutral and complimentary. For your contrast colors and accent-pop, that can be achieved with curtains and throw pillows for a powerful effect. There's no need to buy vivid contrasting paint colors unless you have a very clear vision and a natural eye for color.
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Choosing the color scheme for your staging is not as hard as you think. Using sample designs, you can quickly put together a palette you like, test the swatches, and make your final decisions. For more investment home insights or professional services you can count on, contact us today!
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