Selling a house is one of the largest transactions most of us will ever make. Considering how much you’ve invested in the place in terms of both money and sweat equity, it’s natural to want to get as much profit from the sale as possible. One strategy to maximize profits that most real estate professionals will recommend is staging: temporarily dressing, furnishing, and arranging the home to make it as appealing as possible.
Staging works—it’s been shown to speed up the time to sale and to increase the sale price of a house. But it’s not magic—there’s a specific psychology to staging a house that you have to keep in mind, especially if you’re choosing to do it yourself in order to save a few bucks. It might seem like all you need to do is freshen the paint, clean the place up, and make a few furnishing choices, but if you want to get the most bang for your staging buck, you should keep staging psychology in mind.
The first thing to know about house staging psychology is the fundamental purpose of staging: It’s not to make the house look clean or presentable—it’s to shape a narrative. Essentially, you’re telling prospective buyers how they could live in your home. From where they’ll have their morning coffee to where they’ll entertain, you want to help them imagine what life will be like in the house. The easier you make it for people to see themselves living their ideal life there, the easier it will be to close the sale.
In order to support that narrative, there are specific psychological levers you’ll be pulling as you stage.
The Primacy Effect
First impressions really do matter, and the first staging psychology lever you’ll pull is what’s known as the “primacy effect.” This is a common cognitive bias wherein the first impression we get of something influences our perceptions in an outsized way. In other words, if the first impression people get from your home is that it’s luxurious and comfortable, this will override any negative impressions they get later in the house tour.
Staging itself helps with this, of course, but you should also focus on the curb appeal and the entryway of the house to really cement that first impression as positive. Then, consider the fact that each room or space within the house will also offer its own first impression—that’s why decluttering is so vital. Clearing out your stuff and leaving behind a clean, curated visual will let potential buyers see a house they can easily move into, instead of getting an impression that they’d be buying a lot of chores.
Positive anchors
The next bit of staging psychology you need to implement is anchoring—you want buyers to see the house as valuable right away so that impression gets anchored in their heads. This is why staged homes tend to sell for higher prices.
This involves staging with expensive-looking furniture, if you can, and decorating in a luxe way that implies high value. Seeing high-end decor, smart technology, and other expensive features cements in people’s minds that this is a high-value house, and they will be more willing to pay a premium for it because of that perceived value. Anchoring this value also lets you use the next bit of staging psychology—the Halo Effect.
What do you think so far?
Halo effect
The Halo Effect is a cognitive bias where a positive impression prevents you from seeing the flaws or downsides. If your property is a bit old or needs some work, staging it with a fresh, luxe look not only anchors a higher value in buyer’s minds, it can actually cause them to overlook those flaws. Even if they’re aware of some of the problems on one level, the overall sense of value and comfort is what will drive their decision-making.
It’s important to note that you shouldn’t try to conceal problems or needed upgrades; that would be unethical. The goal here is to let the staging drive a potential buyer’s enthusiasm so they willingly overlook those problems in favor of the comfortable, high-value narrative you’ve constructed.
Emotional investment
A key aspect of staging is triggering an emotional response in folks touring your house. Your goal is to make them imagine living there, and to make that fantasy one they associate with positive emotions. To do that, you’ll engage their senses:
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Lighting. Soft lighting and a focus on natural light creates a warm, inviting atmosphere.
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Scent. A house that smells fresh and clean is a comfortable space that doesn’t hint at a lot of work to be done. (Pro tip: Get someone who doesn’t live there to sniff the place out; we often become nose-blind to how our house smells.) You can also try to trigger a sense of nostalgia with the tried-and-true trick of baking some cookies. Don’t go overboard—an entire can of air freshener, a house that smells overwhelmingly of cookies, or a house that smells like you just cleaned it using buckets of bleach can backfire. Subtlety is key.
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Aspiration. We all know there’s the way we think we’re going to live our lives, and then there’s reality. You want to offer potential buyers the fantasy. Maybe you don’t spend time cozied up in a reading nook with a good book and a cup of tea, for example, but you wish you did—so create that reading nook for buyers to picture themselves in. Their emotional attachment to the idea will make them more positive about the house overall.
Rule of three
When staging a house, an easy psychological approach is to group things—furniture, decorations, lighting, even color palettes—using the Rule of Three. This is exactly what it sounds like: Arranging things in subtle groups of odd numbers (typically three) and arranging them to have some height and texture variety. The psychological effect is that this is perceived as more natural and less “stagey” than even numbers, and odd numbers tickle the brain’s need for symmetry, so people will be more engaged with your house.
Depersonalize
Finally, you want to make a buyer’s path to imagining themselves living in your clean, fresh, artfully decorated home as easy as possible—so get rid of yourself. Decluttering and depersonalizing doesn’t mean bare walls and empty rooms, it means going neutral with your decor and artwork. Get rid of the hobbies, the personal collections, and that weird lamp everyone else hates. Leaving some personal touches, like a few tasteful photos of the family, is a good idea—you don’t want the house to feel like a hotel. But you also don’t want people to feel like they’re intruding, or like they’re picking their way through your dirty laundry.
