When selling an apartment, you also need to remember that there may be others exactly the same as yours for sale at exactly the same time. Why would someone buy your apartment rather than the one upstairs? Or the one that’s really similar right across the road?
By considering the furniture layout carefully and styling it well, you can have a dramatic impact on your buyers’ perception of value and its bottom-line sales result. Here’s how you can create a lot of extra space and impact that will make your apartment the one that stands out.
Show your buyers clearly defined living spaces (living room, dining room, study nook, outdoor living, etc.), rather than a jumble of assorted furniture pieces. A simple, well-planned layout flows and ‘makes sense’ to buyers, but more importantly, creates more visual floorspace, making the area feel larger.
If possible, remove any over-sized, heavy pieces of furniture. Instead opt for low-profile sofas with legs, chairs without arms, glass dining tables and/or coffee tables and consoles in the entry (rather than heavy chests of drawers).
BONUS TIP: Don’t be tempted to believe the myth that pushing all your furniture hard up against the walls will make your rooms feel larger! Placing a couch even a few inches away from the wall creates more ‘breathing room’ and more visual space.
I actually love dark walls … BUT they usually aren’t the best option for selling an apartment. The problem with dark colours is they can make walls appear to close in and are especially confining in small rooms. Some buyers will obviously love them too, but the majority will not. So light colours are a wiser choice. Simply re-paint any dark or feature walls with light colours to make the walls appear to recede, creating a bright and airy feel.
Mirrors are the perfect addition to small spaces as they amplify the available light and space to create an expansive feeling. But also consider adding other reflective elements like mirrored bedside tables, lamps … or crystal, silver and glass accessories.
A great styling trick to make rooms feel larger is to use a neutral coloured sofa that is the same as the wall colour behind it. It almost seems to ‘disappear’. From a theoretical point of view, when there’s little contrast, your eye is able to move through a room uninterrupted, which creates the illusion of additional space. So you can still showcase a lot of lounge seating (great selling feature!), but without it dominating the space.
By maximising your balcony, you can create another valuable living space, so do not skimp on this key area.
Use furniture as bold and large as possible (rather than a couple of plastic folding chairs in a corner) as it will really make the balcony feel grand and impressive. As long as you keep a clear walkway around the furniture (1-1.5m), this trick will definitely make your balcony feel larger.