"Secrets of Home Staging" takes an overwhelming process and breaks it into six easily accomplished steps. The author distills her considerable knowledge and skillset into an easy-to-follow, step-by-step process intended to save money, time and frustration while adding potentially tens of thousands to the final purchase price of a home.

This book is perfect if you are, like me, someone who knows good design when you see it but lacks the confidence to do it yourself. The tips and tricks in this book helped me cross that hurdle and learn to create an up-to-date, stylish space on my own that I am confident will raise the perceived value of my home (and is super pleasant to live in while it’s on the market).

My time to prepare the house for staging was cut in half by following the steps in the book. It helped me avoid needless anxiety from procrastination by motivating me to quickly go through the necessary stages of repairs and updates, and to detach emotionally while sorting through a lifetime of stuff to declutter and depersonalize my home so that buyers could envision themselves living in their own dream home, not my tired, worn out home.

Highlights:
• Understanding the "key rooms" in my home was liberating! It was such a help to know which rooms to concentrate my time and energy on based on how they will photograph so buyers get the best impression in just a few seconds of scrolling through online listings.
• Summaries at the end of each chapter provided a quick refresher of each step as I was in the process of preparing my home for sale.
• Tips and hacks: Who knew you could quiet squeaky floors with baby powder? You can use toothpaste instead of spackle to fill up holes in the wall left by hanging artwork! What?
• Beautiful before-and-after photos made it so much easier to visualize how a dated or awkwardly arranged room can be easily transformed in just a few steps.

"Secrets of Home Staging" is a lifesaver if you’re preparing your home for market. Don’t waste your time trying to figure it out on your own or, worse, avoid staging at all because it seems too overwhelming or expensive. Take advantage of this book to learn how a relatively small investment of time and money to stage your home to meet buyers’ expectations can yield a huge payoff when the offers come rolling in.