A Coat of Paint to Freshen your Property!

 

When preparing you home for sale, a fresh coat of paint is often the easiest and most cost effective way of sprucing up your property. Be sure to consider these key points before getting started:

 

• Check walls for dirty or greasy marks (clean carefully so as not to damage paint work) and touch up skirting boards, architraves, windowsills, fireplaces and doors if needed
• If you are repainting a certain room or wall, ensure it will blend in with other walls rooms (or you may have to paint throughout)
• Keep open plan kitchens and living areas the same tones to make the space look larger
• A darker toned feature wall in the adjoining living room can look great, however keep the colour neutral
• Choose universally popular colours – They may not be your choice, but the more neutral, the better for selling

The Interior

If your property has individual bright colours different in every room, paint it out neutral. If your home has kept its white, blank canvas the whole of its life with you as an owner, now is the time to put a bit of decor into the walls. Painting, whether you do it yourself or have a professional come in is a very low cost improvement that can refresh and add to the appeal of your property tremendously. Painting creates the feeling of new, clean and contemporary. To paint a fairly neutral but distinct feature wall creates warmth and depth to a room. Generally the rule of thumb is that if you painted the colours of your property 5 or more years ago, the colour palette of your property needs to be rethought.

With all the home improvement television shows and all the Home Decorating magazines on the market, finding the current trends to update your property is fairly easy. All the magazines explain what color the photo is painted and where to get furniture, linen etc. Remember, you need to know your demographic, the age and socio economic status of your potential buyer, but you can’t guess their taste. Therefore you have to keep your colours fairly neutral but give it a designer feel.

The Exterior

Buyers can be put off immediately if the outside of the property doesn’t appeal to them. An obscene color or a flaky old fashioned color that makes the property stand out in the street for all the wrong reasons can turn the buyer away in an instant. The first thing that will come to mind is the inside must be the same bad taste and ‘spending lots of money’ will be the next instant image. The colour of the exterior of the property when changed and updated and painted with colours that highlight the positives and hide the negatives can be a complete facelift to properties and make all the difference to the property’s value.

What colour to choose? Check the brick color, roof and fixings that the color will not change. For the paint and trimmings go fairly neutral. I find when you go to the good hardware paint shop areas and pick up various paint company’s brochures, you can get great ideas of contrasting contemporary colors that would work on your property. Otherwise do a drive around and get ideas from other properties whose colour schemes you like and exactly what areas they painted in the contrasting trim colour.

I believe most people are impressed by a fabulous glossy bold colored front door. Don’t be afraid to be adventurous and hard hitting. Your front entrance and street appeal is the ‘window to your home’s soul’ therefore if time, effort and money are spent here more prospective buyers will walk through your fabulous shiny front door.

If you are in need of a more in-depth guide to organising and styling your property for sale, take a look at our e-book Home Styling 100 DIY Tips or view the services Instant Interiors – Residential Styling has to offer.