If you bought bits and pieces to dress your house to sell ...

[Soontobeseller]

What did you buy and how much roughly did you spend?

I know people will think it’s not worth it so I’m hoping those people just don’t bother replying but if you did do it I’d love to hear from you.

I personally feel there’s such a huge difference between houses that have some nice decorative items, art and bedding around the place and ones that have obviously just been put on as they are.

Our house is practically blank because we only just finished decorating so we definitely need to do something to jazz it up a bit for Rightmove and viewings.

ThePricklySheep but the cottage had tons of viewings. I wondered for ages if the sellers actually lived there as it was too tidy and minimal. Turns out that they were left the cottage by an old lady and they spent 5 years replacing the kitchen and bathroom, and yes they lived there.

I think textured things are a way of making a place homely.. a medley of cushions prints, throws and tasteful nik naks.

@Soontobeseller houseplants in abundance are such a great way to make a house look like a home l, I'd do a Homebase grab.. and then maybe a wayfair or IKEA haul of fake plants, taller ones. If you mix the fake with real you get away with it.. then you can take them with you, or sell the IKEA ones on.

We de personalised the house (took down photos etc & boxed up in loft) then touched up scuffed paintwork & bought loads of generic decorative items from Dunelm.
It’s worked a treat for us when selling our previous houses. Good luck

@Soontobeseller

My husband has such an aversion to hanging baskets but maybe I can persuade him for selling purposes.

My husband is too, because I have a couple of cone shaped ones with you bash you head on if try to take a short cut across my from garden. Another reason to leave them there, to stop him standing on my plants!

People definitely buy into the lifestyle so we went with that when we listed our house last summer. We had just repainted the hallway so that was lovely and fresh. We bought fresh bed linen and used it as stunt bedding for viewings. We also bought a throw for the master bed and a couple of cushions to present the bed. We already had other throws to make the other to bedrooms look put together.

We already had cushions for our sofa and already had the colourful rainbow of dining chairs so there was no need to inject further colour in the rather very white downstairs. I think altogether we spent just under £100 to present the house and the rest we already had. I do remember the cleaning. A lot of cleaning.

The only thing I actually spent money on was plants and flowers. I think living things make a house look "cared for" IYSWIM - they show someone is bothering to tend to them!

Just to add more more point. One approach is to buy cheap, the other is to buy things that you really like and can reuse in your new home

We definitely spent less than £100. I mainly added the odd bit here and there. I went to TK maxx and bought nice looking obscure soaps for all the sinks, new hand towels and new doormats for the front and back door. I also bought a big cushion from one of the cheapy shops like dunelm to put on our bed to make it look more "done". I planted a clematis which grew quickly and was in flower for viewings and bedding plants by the front door. We freshened up the gravel on the driveway with a couple of new bags and we only painted the spare room which was previously the dumping ground and put in a new curtain which was £20 from amazon. We put up a generic print we already had and removed the personal photo that was there.

We were worried we hadn't done enough, our house was loved but tired. The estate agent told us not to bother going to crazy and I'm glad we didn't as it's such a stressful time anyway.

I scrubbed it all, hung the mirrors and some photographs and bought tons of flowers. However, it sold to a buy to let landlord and he really wasnt bothered.

I wouldn't spend too much on it especially if the market is good your way.

I scrubbed all the external paintwork, swept all the outside, put plants in pots by the door. I also did the towel bale thing.

But I think the thing I did that had the most impact was renting a storage unit and getting rid of all the clutter/ personal effects. And I also put my huge sofa in it and bought a cheap small sofa from Argos which made the living room look a lot bigger.