By Ron White
In today’s home-selling world, a lot of work goes into preparing a home for a quick sale. One trend to sell a house is toward using home staging professionals to assist in making sure homes show well to potential buyers. Home staging takes into consideration many factors, but few are as important as using the best paint colors. Using the wrong paint colors can send potential buyers reeling. With a little thought, though, paint colors can attract rather than repel buyers. You only need to follow a few basic rules.
Exterior Colors
In picking exterior colors, some colors simply clash with their environment. It might be fun to live in the only bright yellow house on the street, but you must realize that the buyer is new to the neighborhood and does not need the added attention of a canary yellow home. The best colors should take into consideration other homes in the neighborhood and additional environmental surroundings. According to Bob Vila, former host of “This Old House,” earth tones play well in natural settings such as wooded lots. The color also should take into account other features of the home. A good color takes into account the roof color, stonework, bricks and other elements of the home. The color selection also depends somewhat on the vegetation on the lot. Shrubs and trees might impact your choice of exterior color. Lastly, some homes simply feature an architectural style that demands conforming to some traditional colors. As Vila says, Colonial-style homes often look their best with white exteriors, but ranch-style homes are more appealing with more color.
Living Room Colors
The key to living room color is to combine warmth with neutrality. Warm colors are inviting and give a living room a little more character than plain white walls would. Meanwhile, the use of neutral colors ensures that the walls do not conflict with the potential buyers’ plans for the room. Remember that home buyers already have furniture to bring into the home, and they are unlikely to paint or buy new furniture to accommodate bold colors in a living room. Good neutral colors feature creamy whites, muted beiges and light gray tones. A living room is the most likely room to be repainted at some point. Therefore, it is the one room where you can be a little stylish. Check on trends and consider incorporating those color styles into a living room. It might help you sell your house.
Kitchen Colors
The key to kitchen color is to pick something bright. Most buyers want a bright kitchen. After all, this is the place where meals will be prepared, and they need to see the food they are dicing, slicing, chopping, frying and baking. How can you tell if your steak is ready if you can’t see the color? Light colors help add brightness to the room. Light bounces off of them. At the same time, plain white walls are dull and unappealing. Pale yellow, light olive and warm beiges are great kitchen colors.
Bedroom Colors
Bedrooms are designed for relaxation. They are not areas of a home buyers expect to showcase for guests. Therefore, there is little need to establish trendy looks in these rooms. Instead, bedroom colors should be mild, soft tones. Eggshell whites, beiges, lighter grays, light yellows and light olives work well in bedrooms.
Bathroom Colors
Many homeowners make the mistake of going with bold colors in bathrooms. An essential approach to bathrooms is to select colors that emphasize space. Bathrooms are often relatively small spaces, and a small bathroom can turn many buyers away. After all, who wants to knock out a wall to make more bathroom space? Warm whites are great for making bathrooms look larger than they are. Stay away from darker colors. Deep reds, browns, yellows and blues make bathroom walls leap toward a viewer. This makes the room look extremely small.
Information from SFGATE
