Exactly What to Do to Stage a Bathroom That Sells
A 3 step strategy to cover the essential things you need to get absolutely right before listing your home.
Are you getting ready to sell your home and looking for more than just real estate staging tips & tricks?
I love making things easier for my clients so I’m happy to be sharing this one today! It’s long and detailed, but by the end of this article, I hope you have all the information you need to get your bathrooms staged perfectly and you are able to cross it off your list (I know there’s a lot on there right now!)
Wondering why you should listen to my advice?
I’ve been an interior designer for 21 years and in my work with a local reality team in the last few years, have staged over 450 local homes. This means that almost every single week I meet with people getting ready to list their homes for sale, walk through their home room by room with them and give them a detailed to-do list to get their home in it’s most beautiful, styled, photo-ready shape.
Because of this, I’ve seen a LOT of bathrooms over the years and one thing has become pretty clear: I’m always giving out the same 3 main pieces of advice. In this article, I’m going to share with you that exact advice I give my clients for their bathrooms and I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about why these three areas are so important to get right. Now you can know what one pro would tell you to do if she were there with you in your house, too!
I’m so happy you are here with me because not only are you right (staging the bathroom is really, really important!) but because I’ve also put together a concise plan of attack for you. You can stop searching online for random bathroom staging tips & tricks and just follow this plan – I’ve made it clear and simple because I want it to be easy for you.
Why is bathroom staging so critical? Two reasons:
Before we get to the ‘what to do’, let’s lay the foundation for the ‘why’, because understanding why something matters is pure motivation for getting the work done, and you are going to need a little energy and fire beneath you to get these bathrooms staged perfectly!
There are a few places in the home that I think are critical to have staged just right and the bathroom might just be the most important of them all. It’s easy to overlook the power of someone’s comfort in your home when you are selling it, but in my staging experience this is a crucial thing to understand.
One:
People make a purchase decision based on their feeling about your home.
They make a very real, physical decision (one that involves location and money and tons of other ‘hard facts’) from a place of pure emotion. Their feeling about the house is the foundation to the rest of the decision. Without liking your home, feeling welcomed and relaxed there, and being able to imagine themselves and their family comfortably in the house, it is very difficult to go any further in the decision-making process. The house can be crossed off the list based on a feeling.
Two:
People’s comfort (and therefor good feelings) in the very personal space of a stranger is a fragile thing.
These people do not know you. They are standing in your bathroom. Please make it a neutral, clean, bright and comfortable experience for them. Your dirty mirror or wet bath mat is no big deal to you. It’s honestly no big deal in the big scheme of regular life, I get that. But remember: their comfort is fragile.
You want to give people the grace and respect of being able to see your home in as relaxed a way as possible so that they feel good. If the bathroom smells like your damp towel and they are looking at your beard hairs in the sink or your crusty washcloth in the tub, they are going to want to get out of there. Fast.
They are never, ever going to be able to imagine themselves giving their sweet babies a bubble bath in that tub, and those emotional touch-points are what sells houses.
When you understand this flow of events, you understand why staging the bathroom matter so much:
Comfortable people —> good feelings about your house —> wanting to live there —> making an amazing offer
So, now that we are on the same page about just why this is so critical for home staging, let’s get on to the ‘what to do’ part of things! Read on for the plan!
What are the 3 critical things you need to do to stage your bathrooms properly?
1. Deep clean
I don’t mean just regular swish & swipe clean. It needs to be spotless. Wash the walls, wash the garbage can, scrub the toilet really well. Use a de-scaler on the shower head. All the things you mean to do but never have time for, now is the time.
I normally suggest doing this deep clean before pictures and then a light touch up (or whatever is needed to get it back up to this level) before showings.
Honestly, go full ‘Monica’ on this. Toothbrush meets toilet. Replace the seat if it can’t be made white again. Wash the garbage can. Dust. Scrub. Disinfect. Polish. Do it all, and then do a little more.
You want potential buyers to walk in and feel immediately at ease. It should look immaculate & smell fresh.
2. No signs of life
No one wants to imagine you using the bathroom. If any of my former staging clients are reading this, they are probably nodding along right now. (Hi friends!) I say this one at every single appointment because it’s just that important.
This is an area that has three components: 1: personal décor, 2: personal hygiene, and 3: using the bathroom for bathroom things.
Personal decor: These are things like candles, small accessories that are personal (beach sand, seas shells, love notes), framed photos. These should all be removed.
Personal hygiene: Yes, you need to tuck away all your stuff. I’m sorry. My usual approach is to pack the less used stuff from under the sink, in the drawers or in the linen closet into boxes first. You are moving anyways, right? This stuff can usually be put into a box or plastic bin in the basement or in a closet, so that you can get to the hot water bottle or spa socks if you need them, but they are out of the ‘prime real estate’ for the most part.
Another way to make some room in the bathroom is to really simplify what you store in the room in terms of linens – maybe just keeping the ‘in use’ towels in here and moving the others to a bedroom or linen closet, would make some room. I know it’s going to be a pain, but it’s temporary, right?
Then, use a plastic basket or little box to keep your daily items in on the counter. When you have a showing, the basket can just be moved into the (now mostly empty) cabinet or closet. Same idea for the shower items: just have an empty plastic basket that you can quickly empty the shower into and then place the basket in the cabinet. Yes, the shower and bath should be empty of all personal products like shampoo and soap.
Evidence of using the bathroom for bathroom things: I can’t be vague here: tuck away the garbage can (this can go into the cabinet or just in the corner beside the toilet and cabinet if possible), toilet scrubber and plunger (if they can fit beside the toilet and aren’t visible from the door, that works, too!). Remove magazines and obvious air fresheners. If you have a squatty-potty, just no. Hide that thing. Same idea for kids training potties: tuck them away out of sight.
3. Simple and clean styling
So now we are down to an immaculate clean slate. The bathroom is deep cleaned and all personal items are removed. Now it’s time to add in just the right touches to make it look beautiful, updated and comfortable. Think of a spa, show home, or nice hotel. This is the clean, subtly impersonal, luxurious look we are going for.
Since the bathroom is such a small room and since styling it well is so important to selling your home, I think it’s one place that is well worth putting the extra effort into some very specific styling accessories.
This might mean buying a few new things, but it also just might mean looking around your house and using some items that you already own. You really don’t need many accessories in a bathroom and so what you choose is very important. There’s not much to draw the eye and create a vibe for the room – each piece needs to contribute to the correct feeling in the room.
The styling goal of a bathroom is simple and clean. Always choose bright and airy over anything else.
It’s okay to have it look a bit empty to you – remember this isn’t for living in and it’s not about your personal style and what looks and feels good to you. This styling is about marketing your home and what tends to feel best to potential buyers is a bathroom that feels almost brand new and definitely one that feels unused.
Buyers are logical people, and yes they know that the bathroom has been used before… but it sure feels good to be standing in one that feels as pristine as a luxury hotel room (which, to my point, has also been used before by strangers but certainly doesn’t feel like it when you walk in, right?)
A few notes on color: if at all possible, have the bathroom be as neutral as possible with as much white / light cream / light gray as you can. One accent color for the room works well if you already have things that coordinate together in that color. Bring in that ONE color in places like the shower curtain, art, some touches in the accessories. Again, if everything you added into the bathroom was white or light neutrals, that would be perfect, but if you already have some things in another single color and you don’t want to replace them with new things unnecessarily, that will work as well.
Now that that bathroom has been cleared out down to an empty slate by your deep clean and ‘no signs of life’ mission, it’s time to bring in some very specific styling.
Here’s my exact client styling directions in most homes:
1.
New fresh towels in white or a very light neutral. Do not use these towels! Set them out for photos and showings, and other than that hide them from your family. I layer a hand towel over a folded bath towel on the towel rod.
2.
One or two pieces of wall art or decor. Normally these would go above the hand towel rod or above the toilet, but you will know where will work best. These should replace any small hanging shelves. Choose something in a light neutral or in your accent color if you have one.
3.
Counter styling: set up one small grouping on the counter. If you have a free standing tub or a tub in an alcove, I would set another grouping up on an edge or in a corner there as well. The groupings should be 3 items (maybe 4 if using a larger items as a base) – a few of my go-to items are: candles, small plant, small floral arrangement, small hardcover books with nice covers (use as a base for the grouping), glass or crystal-look jars filled with cotton balls or q tips, paper wrapped bars of soap, small nice baskets filled with rolled washcloths, really small framed art, ceramic bowl filled with small wrapped soaps or bath salts, a small tray (as a base), a group of apothecary type amber jars.
Keep it very simple – these are the only 3 areas I style and I keep the counter styling very small and easy – don’t over do it!
A few extra details:
This is also the time to wash or replace the shower curtain if needed. New isn’t critical if it looks clean and is in good shape. (Side note: there is an element of having updated and appealing style in staging and it can definitely add a lot to a room with nothing else going on style-wise to have a nice new curtain in a modern, light color BUT an outdated shower curtain isn’t what is important here: clean and neat is the only critical part.)
Don’t have out a bath mat for photos or showings unless it is freshly washed and looks styled with the décor and you can lay it out just as you are leaving. It’s so hard to keep a bath mat looking perfect and if there is hair, wet footprints or toilet paper bits on it when a potential buyer looks at it, it can be a major turnoff. In my experience, it’s better to just avoid it. Besides, small rooms tend to look more spacious when the flooring is not visually broken up into smaller pieces by a mat.
And that is about every single thing I could say about staging a bathroom well. (Phew!) I hope this post was helpful if you are getting ready to move! If you aren’t planning a move soon and you enjoyed the read, I’d love for you to share it with your beloved past realtor - we all have one! Many real estate professionals find these staging articles are perfect to send along to their clients who are getting ready to list!
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