Staging an Open Floor-Plan

I’ve written before about my love of ranch homes, but one of the layout features you will often run into is a very open floor-plan. While these are wonderful for living in, sometimes an empty house can be even less inviting to a potential buyer when they have an open floor-plan. One reason is because it is difficult for people to gauge the size of an empty room. Another reason is that it is difficult in envisioning the functionality of the space.

A recent job from the end of the year is a great example of how staging helps with these issues. When empty, is was hard to tell how a living room and dining room space would fit. While there has definitely been a shift from buyers emphasizing separate formal dining rooms, buyers still want a warm dining space. In this case I used the back of the couch as a visual divide between living room and dining room.