Lighting Helps Sell Your Home

When it comes to lighting to help sell your home, more is better. Nothing turns off a prospective buyer more than a dark house (except bad smells which we covered in the earlier blog). The first thing is to update any ceiling mounted room lighting. Most older houses still have the original light fixtures from the 80's or even the 70's. New fixtures are only about $25-$40 and make a world of difference in a room. If you cannot change the fixture at least put in new brighter bulbs to lighten the rooms. Make sure all lights work and the glass covers are clean. Dead bugs in the light cover are really icky. Be sure to clean them up. When we moved into our house the living room did not have any over head lights and we only had 2 table lamps for a giant room. There are a lot of windows so during the day it is fine, but at night you could hardly read a newspaper in the living room. We finally installed track lighting on a beam in the ceiling with 5 flouresent flood lights and it makes a world of difference in the way the room looks and feels. I cannot believe we lived here 20 years before we added those lights. If you really want to go all out you can change out the light switches to the new style. They cost a little more than the standard ones, but look so much nicer than the old wornout original ones. When someone is coming to view your home, be sure to turn on every light in the house. It makes it more inviting and shows the prospective buyer how light and bright your home can be. It also makes it way easier for the buyers coming through to not have to figure out how to turn on the lights. One really fancy house i was trying to show had a bank of light 8 light switches on one wall. i figured that would turn on just about everything, but it did not do anything at all. There was a single switch in another room that activated all of the lights in the house and it took me about 10 minutes of trial and error to find that switch. Also if there is under counter lighting or over stove lighting in the kitchen turn them on too. It really brings out the warmth and charm when those little accent lights are on.