Dining rooms often seem to me to be the rooms with the most furniture and the ones homeowners use for more than one purpose. Therefore they tend to collect things not related to dining. When you are getting ready to sell your home take a really close look at your dining room. Most dining rooms are furnished with a table and a collection of other furniture pieces including china cabinets, buffets, servers, sideboards and those "extra chairs". This dining room is the perfect example:
The photo is taken from the foyer so it is the first impression when you walk into the home. As a professional stager my first goal would be to create a sense of spaciousness in this room. One sure way of doing that is to make sure the opposite wall is visible. Here, the opposite wall is largely hidden by the china cabinet and the chandelier. And the room looks almost impossible to move around in. The subtle message to a prospective buyer is that there is insufficient room here to entertain. The homeowner said, "The furniture has been like this for the last 23 years and there isn't any other way the room works."
Enter staging:
Same furniture, except the extraneous pieces have been removed. (2 side chairs and the table leaf went into a basement storage area, the side table found a new home in the living room, and the plant happily relocated to a guest bedroom). The dining room fixture was replaced and simple trim was added below the existing chair rail to give the illusion of wainscotting. The upper walls remained the same color. The coordinating framed prints were relocated from two other rooms. But the biggest difference was simply switching the china cabinet and the server. Now you see the far wall and the dining room looks much larger and much more inviting. Another option would be to remove the china cabinet and leave the buffet allowing you to see all the walls; however, the top of this buffet was marred so I opted to leave it in place. Plenty of visible floor says there is ample space to move around and entertain. The homeowner stood in the dining room and kept saying, "It looks so large", "I can't believe this is the same room", "i would never have thought . . "
Great staging is about looking beyond "how it always is" to find what is possible. As a stager I am focused on highlighting the spaciousness of a room, the architectural features, and defining one purpose for the room. So, now there's plenty of room here for family dining and entertaining, and a much more welcoming feeling as you enter the home, making any buyer take notice.
Before you sell your home, consult with a certified professional stager in your area to see just what is possible! If you're on the beautiful island of Maui, you can find out what is possible for your home by contacting me at Just Your Style Interiors.
Janet L. Jones
800.766.1558
www.just-your-style-interiors.com
Just Your Style Interiors, LLC provides home staging, redesign and interior decorating services on the beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii.
Maui Hawaii 
