Home Office Home Staging

When you are staging your home office space, put yourself in the buyer's shoes. What kind of space would you look for? How would you like it to function? Where would you like it to be? How would you like it to feel when you are in a home office?

Even if the space is only a corner of a living room, you can make your home instantly appeal to people who telecommute or do some work from home. The more buyers you can attract, the better your chances of selling your home for the most money.

When we stage a home office, we always use the principles of feng shui and color theory to guide us.

Your home office should be a model of efficiency and productivity. Now that it is decluttered and cleared of excess furnishings, you can concentrate on creating the right feeling in the room with color.

• Colors have appeal beyond their aesthetic qualities. In a home office, you want to choose colors that will promote a business-like atmosphere. Beige colors are conservative and relaxing. Ivory connotes quiet and pleasant. Blue is strong, important and intelligent.
• For home office walls we will frequently paint an office Benjamin Moore's Pale Almond OC-2 for its conservative look.
• If you are painting mouldings, try ivory semi-gloss paint instead of the usual white for trim.
• With this color scheme, we usually will employ blue and ivory accessories to complete the picture.

The desk and desk chair should be positioned so that you are facing the doorway entrance to the room when seated at the desk. (You don't want your back to the doorway.) Try and keep the desk and chair so that they don't block either the view out the window or the path to the window from the doorway. Try putting the desk at an angle or perpendicular to the window if that works better in your room. If there is a guest chair, position that chair facing the desk or at an angle to it. If the room is particularly large and you need a bookshelf in it, make sure that the bookshelf is not the first thing you see when you walk into the room. Bookshelves are large and can command all the attention away from what you are selling - a quiet place to work that is spacious with great light coming from the window.

Whether you have hardwood, tile or wall-to-wall carpeting in your home office, it should be clean and as new-looking as possible.

• If the room has hardwood or tile, place an area rug under the desk and desk chair. It will absorb noise and anchor the desk and chair in the room. With beige walls, a nice navy blue and ivory patterned rug works perfectly. Make sure that the rug is large enough so that the desk chair doesn't sit half-on and half-off the rug.
• Wall-to-wall carpeting should be neutral in color. Try taupe carpeting if you are buying new carpeting. It goes with everything, doesn't show stains as easily as beige or tan and is a very current color trend.

With few occasional pieces in the home office, adequate lighting can be a challenge.

• The desk should have an appropriately scaled lamp. This task lighting should be bright enough to work by and the size/height of the lamp should not overpower the desk.
• The room should have general lighting. Can lights or an overhead fixture (such as a light on a ceiling fan or flush-mounted fixture) will work. If these are not options, then consider a floor lamp for one of the corners.
• Natural light is very important in a home office so take care not to block the windows with overly heavy window treatments. Keep window treatments limited to side panels in ivory or navy and take away any light-blocking blinds of any kind.

Accessories in a home office should be non-specific and gender neutral.

• One framed picture on a wall is usually enough to fill the space. Choose a landscape or scene from a vacation destination. Finding an art subject with blue in the composition will help reinforce a theme of peace and intelligence.
• Desk accessories should be limited to a book, the lamp, and a decorative object such as a paperweight or small box. You can hide your current paperwork in the box, but everything else work-related should be hidden away in the desk drawer or in the closet storage.
• You can place a large leafy plant in a corner to add life to the room. (You can even group the plant with a floor lamp to create a vignette.)If you are staging a home office that is within the living room or another room, then a small plant or simple flower stem can be put on the desk.

Staging the kitchen is next on our to-do list. Many realty pros consider the kitchen to be the most important room in the house for a sale and we will spend a lot of time doing an interior redesign on it.

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