We’ve often mentioned that the business of buying a home is a sensual experience. Prospective buyers actually use their senses to evaluate a home before committing to buy it or, in the alternative, relegating it to the virtual rubbish bin. What buyers see, hear, smell, and feel when they enter a home can make all the difference in sealing the home-buying deal. Those who make a business of house styling for sale – home stagers – have learned to make the most of sensual experience in getting their work done well.

Each of the senses plays a role in the decision-making; the soft music playing in the background as buyers tour the property, the scent of immaculately clean kitchens and baths, as well as the perfect room temperature, all enhance the prospective buyer’s sense of comfort. The one sense that buyers rely upon most, though, is the visual experience a home can generate. It is the buyer’s eyes that help them to narrow the list of thousands of property available online. It is their eyes that reinforce the romance that ignites when they first actually see their future home. The eyes have the final say in the home-buying process.

Those who do the work of house styling for sale – home stylists, or home stagers as they are sometimes called – often use visual cues to highlight the most interesting features of the home. Here are a few of the most popular visual pointers in use today by the best property stylists.

• Focus: In order to help the prospective buyer find the best features in a room, the best home stagers will highlight the area near the room’s focal point to draw your eyes toward that spot. Notice that they position accessories or room accents near the fireplace or the beautiful view offered by the bay window. As you look at magazine layouts of beautiful homes, notice how a tall plant or pronounced vertical furniture like a tall bookcase draws one’s eyes to the cathedral ceilings. In this way, your eyes do a better job of taking in the whole of the room, not just what is right at eye level.
• Dissonant Notes: Our eyes are most comfortable with even numbers. When they see a table set for four, they scan right past it. If you want to make the viewer stop and look more closely, give their eyes a grouping of three, five, or seven items to explore. Groupings that contain an odd number of items stop the viewer’s automatic scan of the room and causes the eyes to linger. Three pendant lights above a kitchen island is an eye stopper. Three stools at the breakfast bar have the same effect – making the viewer stop long enough to appreciate the amenity highlighted in this way.
• Create Cosy Conversation Areas: Placing furnishings in such a way as to facilitate conversation is one way to appeal to several of the senses at once. We humans love intimate interaction and even if we’re not always good at it, we want to think we are. When we create little conversation nooks, we give the buyer the opportunity to visualise such interactions which appeal to his or her sense of comfort and safety.
• Rugs: Rugs are clever tools to break up a large common space into several smaller activity-specific places. Here a place for board games and the occasional poker night. There a place to select a book from the shelf and read away a rainy afternoon. Use a rug to anchor and delineate these little nooks.
• Eschew Empty Rooms: While you may choose not to fully stage every room in your home prior to listing the property, don’t make the mistake of leaving rooms empty. Without points of reference, the room’s size can get lost in the visual crowd. Having some furniture will help the buyer get a feel for how much of their own furniture can actually fit comfortably in the space.

Making effective visualisation possible is one of the many secrets to creating a connection between your home and its new owner. By knowing and understanding the eye-brain connection, the professionals at house styling for sale — like the design team at Urban Chic Property Styling — can help the buyer to effectively visualise how the rooms in your home can work together to create a workable family space.