When many people think of selling an NJ home, they focus on the bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens. While these are important areas to address when staging your home to sell, there is one space that is often overlooked – your closets. Closet space is extremely important to many home buyers and should not be glossed over when you’re staging your home. Here’s what you need to do to stage your closets like a pro.

Do one closet at a time

You’ve probably got more than one closet in your home. In fact, when you start thinking about tackling all the closets you have, then you may start to feel a little overwhelmed. Take it one closet at a time. Start with an easy one first, like a linen closet, so you can get the hang of it before attempting to stage the walk-in closet in your master bedroom.

Remove all items from closet

The first thing you’ll want to do when staging your closet is to remove everything from it. Yes, we mean everything. As you remove items, decide what you want to keep, what you want to donate, and what can be tossed. Have boxes nearby for those things you want to get rid of so you can easily move them out of the house.

Aim to reduce items in each closet by half

Buyers want to see spacious closets. Your closets will not look very big if they are completely stuffed with your personal items. Aim to reduce the number of items in your closet by at least half. When you’re staging your closet, you want to demonstrate how the closet can be used. Only keep universal items in the closet, like clothes and shoes. The closet should be more like a blank slate so potential buyers can imagine their own belongings inside. After you’ve determined what items you want to keep but don’t want to use for staging, box up those items and put them in storage.

Clean and paint

Before returning any items to the closet, it’s time to thoroughly clean it. Think about it — when was the last time you vacuumed or wiped down the shelves? Once you’ve finished cleaning, you should paint the closet in a bright, neutral color like white or beige. Let the closet air out and replace any burnt-out light bulbs.

Arrange items neatly

Now the fun part starts! When you’re staging your closet with the remaining items, you want to keep things as tidy as possible. You should always be able to see the back of the closet wall when you look inside, so don’t stuff things in there. Keep the floor as clear as possible — no shoes or tote bags should rest on the floor. Use matching hangers to hang clothes and keep at least one inch of space between each hanger. Make sure all hangers face the same way. Arrange clothes and linens by color and style and use baskets to corral smaller items like belts and scarves.

Well-staged closets are a home-run with today’s buyers. Don’t forget this important step when you’re staging your home to sell!

The Allison Ziefert Real Estate Group is a top producing real estate team based at Compass in Short Hills, NJ. We are local market experts, specializing in real estate and homes in Maplewood, South Orange, Millburn/Short Hills, Montclair, West Orange, NJ and the surrounding towns. We are driven by earning great testimonials and referral business from happy clients. You can read our testimonials here.