Preparing Your Home for Sale: Lessons from Styling Our Own House

When we recently put our own home on the market, I was reminded just how important presentation is when preparing a property for sale. Even as a designer, seeing the process through the lens of selling your own home teaches you a few things.

Edit Back the Furniture

One of the first things we did was remove furniture that wasn’t essential.

Initially I worried the house might look a little empty, but once the rooms were photographed the benefit became clear. With less furniture, the flow through each space was much easier to see. Rooms felt larger, foot traffic moved more naturally, and there was breathing room around each piece of furniture.

Editing back the furniture allowed the architecture of the home to stand out rather than the contents of the room.

Remove the Small Decorative Pieces

Another change was removing most of the smaller decorative items.

Instead of lots of little objects on surfaces, only a few more significant pieces were left and styled thoughtfully. This immediately made the rooms feel calmer and more considered.

When preparing a home for sale, simplifying decorative elements helps buyers focus on the space itself rather than the belongings within it.

Artwork Still Matters — But Give It Space

Artwork still plays an important role in a home, but it needs space around it.

We originally had a gallery wall in one area of the house. When the stylist came through, several of those pieces were removed to create more blank space on the wall. The result felt cleaner and more balanced, and the remaining artwork had more presence.

Sometimes removing a few pieces actually makes the room feel more elevated.

Symmetry Helps Create Order

Symmetry is one of the simplest ways to create a cohesive and organised look.

In our children’s bedrooms, the beds were styled in the same way — matching duvets, sheets and throw blankets. We already had matching bedside tables and lamps, which helped reinforce that sense of balance.

Even small details like this can make a room feel calmer and more visually resolved.

Simplify Children's Rooms

Children’s rooms can be one of the harder spaces to edit when preparing a home for sale.

In our case, the rooms were simplified quite a bit. Most toys were removed unless they could be placed neatly in a basket or styled intentionally within the room. Sports gear, trophies and collections of soft toys were also taken away.

This helped the rooms feel more spacious while still keeping a sense that they were children’s spaces.

Keep Cushions Under Control

One thing I was quite firm about was cushions.

I didn’t want an overflow of cushions on the master bed or on the sofa, and there was definitely going to be no “karate chopping.” The stylist worked with what we already had rather than layering on lots of extras.

A few well-chosen cushions are enough. Too many can start to feel staged and slightly overdone.

A Final Thought

Preparing a home for sale often involves removing more than you expect. But stepping back from the personal layers of a home allows the architecture, light and proportions of the space to come through.

And ultimately, that is what helps buyers connect with a property.

You can see more of our Birkenhead home here.