When it comes to selling your home kitchens and baths usually hold the most amount of appeal for home buyers. Staging a bathroom can help get your home sold.

I recently talked about giving your kitchen some sizzle and today we will talk about giving your bathroom some sparkle to capture a home buyer’s attention.

Bathrooms are the most expensive rooms per square foot to renovate.  And your home’s bathrooms will get much scrutiny from home buyers.

Maybe you don’t have the most up-to-date bathrooms, but here are nine home staging tips for your bathroom that won’t break the bank.   

I will also lay out a few tips for doing some simple bathroom renovations on the cheap.  A full renovation rarely pays off, but some simple projects could pay huge dividends when selling your house.

9 Home Staging Tips For Your Bathroom

There are 3 keys to successfully selling your home.  

The first key is preparing and staging your home properly to appeal to the most amount of buyers.

Let’s look at how to stage a bathroom.

It starts with creating a spa-like appearance.  If you can give your bathroom a spa effect it will give your bathrooms the greatest appeal to your home buyers viewing your home.  It will create a relaxing peaceful area home buyers want to be.

With the bathroom being a very expensive room to renovate, you want to leave homebuyers with the impression that your bathroom is great the way it is, or, at the very least it is not an area of the home that needs attention right away.

And with some proper preparation and staging, you can refresh a bathroom to go from tired, dull and drab to WOW!!

How To Stage A Bathroom

1- Sparkling Clean

Every corner of your bathroom should shine when staging a bathroom in your home.  Fixtures, floor, sinks, tubs, windows and grout should just absolutely sparkle.  And, don’t forget to clean the windows.

Buyers can overlook an outdated bathroom if you take the time to make it shine.

2- Remove all Personal Hygiene Products

Of course, for most sellers, you are living in your home and you need your bathrooms functional.  Find a way to pack up all, and I mean all of the personal hygiene products.  Get a basket you can store away under a bed or in a closet.

You want to show off the counter space to home buyers unhindered by your family’s personal items.  Remember think spa… you wouldn’t find half used tubes of toothpaste and hair gel lying around or a brush with loose hair in a spa, would you?

3- Remove all Cleaning Products

Again pack up all your cleaning products and hide them away.  When have you ever gone into a spa and seen the cleaning products they used to make sure the bathroom sparkled.  This includes toilet brushes and plungers!

4- Fresh Paint

It may be time to remove that wallpaper and add fresh paint.  Stick to neutral paint colors for your bathroom… greys are in this year!  But creamy whites, lighter taupes could work as well.  Pick colors that lighten and give the new homeowner a neutral palette to work with.

Don’t forget to give the ceiling a nice fresh coat of white paint as well!!

5- Clean and Organize Closets and Cabinets

A good rule of thumb is to make sure your linen closets, medicine cabinets and vanities are no more than 2/3rds full.  Along with opening up your closet space make sure it is extremely organized. If your linen closet and vanities are overflowing you leave your home buyer thinking if you cant fit all your belongings how are they going to.

6- All Your Light Bulbs Are Clean and Working

Go ahead and buy all new bulbs of the same type.  Over the years, owners tend to slap whatever bulbs they have lying around and color an wattage is mismatched.

The best color temperature for bathrooms are in the 5000 kelvin range and you should get the highest CRI rating for LED bulbs that you can find.

7- Buy New Bathmats, Shower Curtain and Towel Sets.

Keep them simple, solid and a complimentary color to the paint you have chosen.  A simple off white waffle shower curtain has a nice upscale feel and get nice luxurious towels to match your wall color and shower curtain.  Definitely get rid of that soap scum splattered, clear vinyl curtain with a fish scene on it!

Again think spa and luxurious.

8- New Fixtures

Think about upgrading all or some your outdated fixtures.  This includes lighting fixtures, fans, towel racks, vanity hardware, toilet paper rolls etc…  A fresh new look with the fixtures can prevent a whole new remodel if your bathroom is slightly outdated.

The Home Depot’s and Lowes of the world have made buying new fixtures cheap and easy.

9- New Caulking

Rip out that old, mildewy caulking and replace with fresh bright caulking.  No one wants to look at mildew.

Bonus Tip- Bring Back A Few Items

Once your bathroom is stripped and clear, bring back some items to give your bathroom space a warm homey feel. Think about basket holding a few rolled up towels or face clothes.  A small arrangement of three candles or a basket of unused, decorative soap.  Maybe a small decorative lamp for the counter top.  A small plant or some fresh cut flowers can also help liven up the space.

Add just enough to give a lived in feel without overdoing it.

Remodeling Your Bathroom on the Cheap

Maybe your bathroom is a little bit more outdated than the market will bear for top dollar.  There are certainly some things you can do on the cheap that can go along way with out ripping apart the whole bathroom.

It is generally not wise to do a full remodel just before selling, you will probably not recapture nearly what you spent.  Once you have to start replacing tubs, moving plumbing, move electrical and rip out floors is when bathroom renovations starts to get costly.

When showing homes I often go into bathrooms that are in perfectly good condition but just appear to be several decades outdated.

Think about these small upgrades if your bathroom is outdated but in good shape. These simple bathroom renovations will not break the bank and can certainly liven up your bathroom to attract a home buyers attention.

Outdated Tiles and Tub Colors

Probably the biggest thing we see as agents is a bathroom that has a tiled shower and walls.  While the tiles are intact, the color can be so outdated.

As a matter of fact I went in to one today.  The bathroom was in actually in great shape but the tiles were a combination of mint green, pink and black! The grout was perfect and not one cracked tile.  This is a perfect situation where recoloring the tub and tile can go a long way in wowing the buyers.

You can hire someone to recolor the tiles!!  And it is far cheaper than ripping everything out and redoing it.  This goes for an outdated tub color as well. Fiberglass and acrylic tubs and surrounds can also be re-colored along and it is not limited to porcelain tubs. The cost of recoloring is a fraction of the cost of a complete remodel.  An average tub cost is around $460.00 to recolor.

There are recolor kits for the DIY’er as well.  For a few hundred bucks you could recolor an entire bathroom yourself.  But before you run off and do it yourself, assess your skill set and the difficulty.  A bad recolor job will not help your situation and may make it worse.

Bathroom Floor

Believe it or not the same people who recolor and refinish your tub and tile may be able to recolor your outdated ceramic floor as well, while saving you thousands in renovation costs.

Don’t discount going over your existing bathroom floor as well. If it is tiled, the grout lines can be leveled with levelastic and you can put an inexpensive more current floor over it.  You could consider sheet vinyl or even something like waterproof vinyl plank or even re-tile over the old tile.

One area of caution is keep your floor height in mind you don’t want a huge difference in transition from a hallway to a bathroom floor.

Check out the vinyl plank flooring from Home Depot.  At under $3 a square foot what could a 14 square foot half bath cost?  $45 or maybe a full bath flooring could cost under $125.  Vinyl sheet plank can certainly be a DIY project.

Change or Paint the Vanity

Again your vanity may be in perfectly good shape but outdated.

Consider painting the cabinet if the sink and counter are relatively current.

Or if it is a stand alone vanity with a sink, pick one up at Home Depot or Lowes that is of a  current styling.  I’ll be honest new and shiny even though it may not be an expensive piece will be far better than old and outdated.

Actual Results

My business partner and I recently re-did are two half baths in our office.  The flooring was sheet vinyl that was very outdated and the cabinet was oak and while still solid the finish was faded.

We stripped everything out of the bathroom.  Repainted the walls, layed down a current vinyl sheet to replace the old outdated vinyl, painted the oak cabinet a semi gloss antique white, changed the faucet and the mirror hanging above the sink.

All told we spent less than $125.00 for each bathroom.  But the results went from old and outdated to current and trendy and it was only a little over a half days worth of work with the two of us.

For a seller selling a home the $300 spent would have greatly increased appeal and would have returned $$$ ten fold.

From Ughhhh to Oolala!

In the graphic above we have an outdated bath.  The pink and black tiles are severely outdated as well as the vanity and mirror/cabinet.  The good news is you can work with the floor, the tub, toilet and sink color already there.

So what could you do?

• • Recolor all the Ceramic Tile Professionally-  $1000-1200

• • Paint the Vanity- $50

• • Paint the Walls and ceiling- $100

• • Replace Mirror and Cabinet with a Framed Mirror- $250

• • Waffle Bath Curtain With Matching Tiles and Bath Mat- $125

• • Replace Cabinet Hardware-  $50

• • Accessories for the Bathroom-  $75

• • From Ughhh to Oolala- $1650- $1850

Definitely talk to your agent or home stager before spending money on a major update like this.  But in most cases I would say a small investment like this to totally transform a full bath would be worth every penny.

Make That Bathroom Sparkle

Bathrooms and kitchens sell homes.  So when it comes time to sell get your baths in tip top showing shape with these helpful bathroom staging tips.   When staging a bathroom think spa!

But what if your bathroom is outdated? When it comes time to sell an entire bathroom remodel will never recoup you all the money you spent. But what do you do when you have a less desirable updated bathroom or baths?

Several hundred to a couple thousand dollars on a bathroom refresh can certainly have big returns.  A little ingenuity can go a long way when refreshing your bathroom.  Not only can it be the difference of making more money on the sale it could be a matter of giving your home more appeal for a quick sale, instead of letting your home languish on the market.

Other Real Estate Resources on Preparing Your Home for Sale:

• • Lynn Pineda  Stage Your Home Like a Pro

• • Bill Gassett  Massachusetts Home Preparation

• • Steve Herron  A Little Prep Goes a Long Way

• • Dan Barcelon  About Virtual Staging

• • Conor MacEvilly  3 Critical P’s When Selling a Home

9 KILLER Home Staging Tips for Your Bathroom is provided by Kevin Vitali of EXIT Group One Real Estate of Tewksbury MA. If you would like to sell your home give me a call at 978-360-0422 and let’s get the process started.

Real Estate Services in the following areas: Northeast Massachusetts, Merrimack Valley, North Shore and Metrowest. Including the following communities and the surrounding area- Amesbury, Andover, Billerica, Burlington, Chelmsford, Dracut, Groveland, Haverhill, Lowell, Melrose, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton, North Andover, North Reading, Reading, Stoneham, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Wakefield, Wilmington, Westford

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