8 Common Home Staging Mistakes to Avoid, According to the Pros

It's pretty much a given that house hunters start their search by looking at homes online, and amazing pics can determine whether they scroll past your listing or add it to their must-see list. It might be tempting to only focus on how your home presents in person, but you should also consider how it comes across in photos.

"Photographers typically look to a window or fireplace as a focal point, so stage furniture around that," suggests Fernanda Bertrand, co-owner and founder of Upstaging Seattle, which has staged more than 700 homes. "If you block the view of a window, for example, potential buyers can't get the right idea of scale from the listing photos."

Open floor plans can be tricky to decorate, and a bare expanse of floor with nothing to warm it up or delineate specific spaces is a common blunder that home stagers see. "It's really important to have area rugs to define different areas," says Bertrand. "Without them, furniture looks like it's floating."

Whether your house is for sale or not, consider adding area rugs if you don't have them, or swapping out your current rugs if you've lived with them for a while. Area rugs—particularly those in high-traffic locations—take a lot of abuse, especially if kids and pets are part of your household. Bertrand's advice: "Don't invest a lot in area rugs. Choose rugs that are super affordable—I use ones from Rugs USA a lot—and replace them every couple of years for an easy way to get a major update."

A mistake homeowners often make, both when decorating for themselves and staging their home for sale, is erring on the side of too much small stuff. Common culprits include large sofas with an array of too-petite throw pillows, bookshelves or built-ins with a lot of frames and tchotchkes, and coffee tables crowded with small-scale objects. "It always looks better to use fewer big things than a bunch of small ones," says Bertrand. On a coffee table, for example, two large vases and some greenery creates a more sophisticated look than an array of small items.

Is your buyer most likely to be a young family? A single professional? Empty nesters? You want buyers to see your place as somewhere that fits their lifestyle, so give some thought to who might be most interested in your location and type of dwelling. "If I'm staging a condo in downtown Seattle, for example, I'll stage a second bedroom as a guest room or home office rather than as a nursery or a kid's room," explains Bertrand. Also, resist the urge to go overboard with super-specific decor. You want your home to appeal to as many people as possible.