Top 5 Tips for Decorating Your House to Sell During the Holidays

Decorating for the holidays while selling your home can give your family a sense of joy and pride, whilst also inviting in potential buyers by making them feel right at home. Here are our 5 top tips for tastefully decorating your house to sell during this holiday season.

1. Clean & Stage Your House

Before you decorate, your house needs to be thoroughly cleaned and staged, ready for sale.

You can either deep clean your house yourself or hire a cleaning crew to get the job done.

Make sure to deep clean the kitchen stove, refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, cabinets and countertops, bathroom shower, sinks and faucets, toilets, as well as all windows, shelves, drawers, blinds and drapes, walls, floors, and carpets.

Then, once the house is thoroughly cleaned, you can hire a professional stager to help strategically arrange furnishings and decor to make your house look its best.

This may involve a refresh of your own belongings or renting furnishings and decor temporarily.

2. Complement Your Palette

Before you start thinking about decorating, it’s important to make sure your holiday decorations match your current decor to create visual continuity and harmony throughout your entire house.

If your living room is painted with ocean blue colors, for example, you may want to choose more soothing and cooler decorative holiday colors, such as whites and silvers.

If your house has more earth-toned colors, then it’s better to choose richer hues such as reds, forest greens, and golds.

3. Let There Be Light

As the Winter months get colder, the holidays are the perfect time to bring in more warmth and light than you usually have indoors.

Stick with a consistent methodology for installing your lights by following the branches on the trees with lights or by wrapping only the perimeter of the trees. Try to keep the method consistent for all the trees or bushes.

While colored lights are beautiful, it is important not to go too overboard as they can overwhelm or seem tacky to potential buyers.

Instead, opt for more basic, simple strings of white lighting to showcase your home’s architectural features or draw attention to the trees in your front or back garden.

4. Keep Decorations Neutral & Secular

It’s best to keep your decorations neutral and secular, as an overwhelming religious feel may be off-putting, and you want to be able to attract any type of buyer.

A holly wreath on the front door, a beautiful, simply decorated Christmas tree, stockings, throws and pillows in the living room and bedrooms. A mantelpiece decorated with holly, ivy, and candles are welcoming and can add value to your house, while remaining neutral and secular.

5. Create a Warm & Cozy Vibe

Entice buyers by creating a homey, cozy vibe with delightful scents.

If it’s cold outside, keep the heat up to a comfortable level, so your house feels warm and inviting to your prospective buyers.

A few subtle touches like brewing a fresh pot of coffee or eggnog, cloves in oranges, and mulled wine are great for scenting your home, along with a burning log fire and cinnamon sticks.

Even adding a subtle candle scent that matches the season is a nice welcoming touch where the aroma makes your buyer feel right at home!