How to Meet the Challenge of Staging an Open Plan Living Space
If you are a homeowner that has one large living space that functions as a kitchen/dining room/living room then these days you are far from alone. This kind of open plan living is becoming very popular, both in new construction homes and as a remodeling project undertaken in older homes.
There are a lot of benefits to be gained by from an open plan living space . As busy as everyone’s lives are everyone tends to gather in the kitchen anyway these days, especially at mealtimes, so actually having more space for everyone to hang out in rather than having an unused formal dining room or a living room that no one ever goes in makes a lot of sense.
An open floorplan also allows a homeowner a great deal of freedom when it comes to actually creating the unique look they want in their own home. If you are planning to sell your home though staging a large, undelineated space can be quite a challenge, especially since you want the space to look like a home rather than a barn! If you have an open living space that is not quite pulled together here are a few simple ideas for staging it to appeal to as many different potential buyers as possible.
Rugs: Rugs are a quick and easy way to delineate the space, helping to create little rooms within the larger space. For example you can gather your “living room” around a large, statement piece of a rug while you dining area can be marked out with a smaller, less ostentatious rug.
The advantage of using rugs in this way when staging is that although they help to set a visual line they are also very obviously temporary, easily removed items so most home-buyers will quickly realize that changing things around to suit their tastes
Shelving: Shelving is another way that you can “mark off’ rooms without adding screens, extra furniture or other clunky barriers. They can be used to form a visual divider between living areas without making any part of the space feel too closed off and have the added bonus that they offer great storage and display possibilities, something that every buyer wants to be able to envision in a new home.
Lighting: In general lighting is often one of the most overlooked and under used aspects of home staging and that is often the case in an open plan room. You can however use lighting very effectively to ‘break up” a space. A sparkly chandelier can bring a little formality to the dining area while more casual lighting for the living room area can heighten the sense of relaxation it really needs to exude.
Don’t want to go to the expense of having a new light fixture(s) installed in a home you will (hopefully) be leaving soon? Then take a look at candle powered options. A great many home decor stores offer all kinds of candle lanterns, lamps and even mini chandeliers, that are both very inexpensive and very easy to mount, allowing you too add extra light, and extra style, with very little effort or expense.