If you want to sell your home quickly, then it’s a good idea to stage it. Staging your home can include, but is not limited to, painting the walls in neutral tones that will appeal to a broad spectrum of buyers and replacing carpets to create a fresh and updated feel.
Staging your home will make the property more enticing, which can lead to you gaining a higher resale value, as well as getting more prospective buyers through the door and an increase in offers.
If your carpet flooring is worn or dated, then this can really put buyers off from purchasing your property. Although flooring is something that could be replaced by new buyers if they so wish, this is an inconvenience that many people would rather avoid.
If a buyer can buy a different property that already has decent flooring as opposed to one where they will need to replace the flooring, then they are going to choose the easier option where the flooring has already been done.
By replacing the flooring yourself and installing new carpets, you will save the buyers the hassle of having to do it, which will be appealing to many people, and you could also increase the value of your home by more than the cost of the new carpets.
Why Carpets?
If you want to install new flooring in your home to make it more saleable, carpet is a good option for a range of reasons.
Affordable
One of the primary reasons people opt for carpet, especially when renovating a home for resale, is because it is one of the most affordable house flooring options while still retaining a sense of quality. Hardwood floors would be preferable among the vast majority of homebuyers; however, this can be very expensive and come with high installation costs.
If you are installing new floors purely for the purpose of selling your home, then you probably won’t want to spend a fortune on flooring, which will essentially be for someone else. While also being affordable, the carpet also offers a nice style.
Another low-cost flooring option is vinyl; however, this can look cheap and will also not be comfortable or appropriate in some living areas, such as bedrooms and living rooms. Carpet will provide you with the lowest cost option while achieving an appealing look and style.
Quick and easy installation
Unlike tiles or hardwood flooring, carpet is quick and easy to install. You can have a new carpet fitted in a room in under an hour, which makes it convenient for families who don’t want to be shut out of their rooms for too long.
The short installation time also leads to lower installation costs because many laborers will be paid by the hour. The quick installation will mean less impact on your life, so you can get on with selling your home.
Covers imperfections
Carpet is a great choice of flooring for areas of the home which have uneven floorboards or other minor flaws and imperfections.
If you have an uneven floor surface, then you will need to remedy this before laying hardwood flooring or tiles because they won’t fit together properly on floors that aren’t level and can result in a poor finish. Carpet, by comparison, is fitted over underlay padding, which pads out the floor so that any imperfections are much less perceptible.
If you opt for a thick pile of carpet, this can also help to disguise any minor flaws in the surface of the floor.
Comfortable
Although hardwood and tile floors have their benefits, many people prefer carpets because of the comfort factor.
When getting out of bed on a cold morning, it will feel much nicer to step onto a carpet rather than a hard floor surface. Carpets also have the same effect as soft furnishings, making rooms feel more warm and cozy rather than cool and hard.
Carpet Colors That Make Your Home More Valuable and Sell Faster
If you are installing new carpets to help sell your property, then you need to think about who your property is aimed at and make your carpet choice accordingly.
If you have a one or two-bedroom bungalow in a quiet area of town, then you might be marketing your home to older people who are downsizing, in which case you should choose colors that will best reflect the tastes of the older generations. Generally, you can expect warm colors to be preferred amongst this target audience, such as beige or tan.
If you are selling an apartment in a city center, then you will probably be targeting your property at young professionals, so contemporary colors like gray or greige will be a better bet.
You should also think about the practicalities of the color of the carpet you choose. For example, white would be a poor choice of color in a large family home because the chances are that the buyers will have children and will be put off by this color of carpet which will stain and mark easily.
Warm neutral carpets
In most instances, warm neutral carpets are your best bet if you are installing new flooring to sell your home. This is because warm neutral colors are inoffensive and typically won’t provoke an intense reaction in any potential buyers, and warm neutrals are also perfect for creating a feeling of comfort that will inspire people to feel like they feel at home in your property. Warm neutral colors can be light or dark.
If you want to make a room feel light and more spacious, then a pale-colored carpet in a warm neutral shade will be best. Choose a shade that will work easily with lots of different paint colors or furniture colors so that people will not be put off by having to replace all of their furniture.
A good pale warm neutral color is beige, which could include soft almond colors through to tan shades. Darker beiges will be best for disguising spills and stains, so use this in rooms that you expect will be used as children’s bedrooms or in high-traffic areas like hallways.
Opt for lighter beige shades of carpet in spaces where you don’t anticipate children living and in small rooms to make them feel bigger. Dark warm neutrals can work well in big rooms to help them feel cozy, but avoid using a dark carpet color in a small room because it can create the illusion that it is even smaller.
You should also avoid dark-colored carpets, like brown, in rooms that lack natural light, as they can make the space feel gloomy.
Cool neutral carpets
Cool neutral carpets are great for modern homes where you want to achieve a fresh and clean look. This works especially well for contemporary-style apartments and single-family homes where you will be aiming your property for sale at young professionals or young families who might be tempted by a decor style that has a more modern appeal.
Gray is the perfect color choice for a cool neutral carpet because it will go with any color decor that new buyers might want to put with it, and it is modern and inoffensive. Gray is also a good shade for hiding dirt and stains, so it will appeal to people who have children or pets.
Choose a mid shade of gray for high-traffic areas and a pale shade of gray for a more airy and breezy feel in living areas.
Colored carpets
Some people target their homes at a more specific target market rather than trying to appeal to a wide range of people. Neutral carpets are great if you want to appeal to the masses, but some people prefer a more stylized look and find neutral shades to be bland or boring.
If you have a quirky home or a home in a particular style, then you could choose a more colorful carpet to appeal to a more narrow audience.
If you can tap into a style that people love, they are likely to pay over the odds for it compared to a home that they feel is bland or lacks personality. In this case, choose a carpet color that accentuates your interior decor but is still easy to live with.
This could include a navy blue carpet in a coastal-themed home or an olive green carpet in a natural-themed room. The key here is to choose a color that adds more personality to the space but still feels relatively neutral and inoffensive.
Avoid any carpet colors that feel too personal to your family, such as a bright pink carpet in a teenage girl’s room, because the people who buy your home may not have daughters.
You should also avoid colors that are too bold and vibrant as these can be overwhelming; instead, opt for colors that are stylish but muted so that they can be used in a wide range of color schemes by the people who buy the property.
