Home Selling Therapy ~ Buy and Sell Property

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Home Selling Therapy

via Home Selling Advice | Home Sellers Blues Blog by Joan Gale Frank on 8/1/11

One of the fastest ways to make a big difference in your home is to add strategic color to your walls and decor. It's the perfect weekend home selling therapy because you are in control, and within hours you can make an attractive change to your environment that can subtly influence home buyers.

Everyone has heard the dream of "settling down in a house with a white picket fence." Notice, no one ever says they want a house with a purple picket fence. Then there's the dream of living in a little yellow farmhouse. Again, no one dreams of living in a little beige farmhouse. Yes, color is that important and that psychologically powerful.

I once painted one wall in my family room nine times, trying to find the perfect color that would complement a grey granite fireplace, a giant Navajo rug, and three bright southwest yellow walls. By the time I finished the nine coats, including multiple layers of primer in between, I think the room was a foot smaller — but it looked glorious. The "copper penny orange" I finally found tied the room together and brought it to vivid life.

The big thing is to not be afraid of paint. Even though repainting is kind of a pain, (okay, it's a big pain) finding the right color is worth it. However, I do offer one other critically important painting tip: Paint barefoot. You can detect even the smallest drop of paint on your foot, but if you paint while wearing shoes or socks, you're in danger of tracking that perfect color all over your house.

Now, let's talk about the psychology of color and how you can use it when staging a house for sale:

YELLOW – Yellow is known to have a very strong psychological impact. It lifts the spirits and is recognized as the color of optimism. Yellow can brighten any room, from a family room, kitchen or study, to dreary basement rooms that get little light. If you don't want to go whole hog and paint an entire room yellow, you can add sunny gold accents in the form of mirrors, picture frames, lamps, artwork or a tall vase full of sunflowers.

GREEN – Quiet, neutral shades of green are reassuring, comforting colors that makes people feel balanced. This makes sense to me – it's our nature. We evolved in a green world. In studies done on treatments for Seasonal Affective Disorder, people exposed to soft shades of green showed improved moods. Green is also recommended for those enduring frequent cold weather. If you want to impart a "green mood" whithout painting, add some soft, leafy plants to your house.

RED – Obviously red grabs attention, and it has been scientifically proven to raise a person's pulse, energy level and to improve cognitive performance. In the book, A Thousand Days in Venice, the author, Marlena De Blasi painted her dining room a bright shade of red. Although she was warned, "It's gonna make the space feel smaller" she countered, "Yes, the space will be warm and inviting." And as often as we're told to keep wall colors neutral, sometimes a shock of color will make a buyer positively remember your home above all others.

But, you don't have to paint a room red to get that bold affect. You can use accents in the form of furniture, curtains, pillows, or place a vase of screaming red or orange flowers right where you want to attract a home buyer's eyes.

BLUE - The wrong shade of blue can come off as cold and institutional. But a soft blue can make a bedroom into a calming retreat from a chaotic world, and a blue with grey undertones can look sophisticated in a bathroom. Blue is also known as a good thinking color, which makes it work well in a room where you plan on performing rocket science calculations or doing your taxes.

WHITE – Although white looks neat and clean, it can also look stark and untouchable. It's also hard to unify a room with white walls. All the objects seem to be floating in their own spaces… a couch here, a lamp and picture frame there. Small spaces, however, often look better with lighter colors, so a smart trade-off is to use one of the many shades of white with a tint of a second color, such as yellow, pink or even violet. White is also a great trim color for any room, and it will always be the perfect color for a picket fence.

For hundreds of other home selling tips and advice for overcoming home selling frustration, read Home Seller's Blues and How To Beat Them. Available in print or as an ebook from Amazon.com, or at http://www.homesellersblues.com.