Home Staging With Furniture Slipcovers

I don’t see my old friend Sally as much as I’d like to.  Every time we meet we have the best intentions of not leaving it too long until we next see each other, but something always delays us.  Usually it’s down to Sally being too much in demand – she’s one of those people who are always busy and on the go.  She works hard at her job as a school teacher, and even in the evenings and at weekends she has a mountain of paperwork and lesson planning to get through.  Not to mention her busy social life in the local canoe club.

Anyway, after a long while it was finally the school holidays and I got a chance to visit Sally the other week.  She was in even more of a mad rush than usual, as she’s met the man of her dreams and is planning on selling her apartment and moving into his house.  Well, she’s trying to sell her apartment.  Turns out it’s actually been on the market several months and she’s had lots of interest, but for some reason no one’s made her an offer.  Sally was quite puzzled by this and was getting disheartened by the whole moving process.  It’s a decent sized place in a nice location, so she couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been snapped up.

Now I was there in person I thought I had a good idea what was putting buyers off.  All Sally’s clutter and her eclectic mix of furniture.  OK, I know that will all go with her when she moves, but when you’re looking at houses it can be hard to see past these things.  Buyers need to be able to visualize themselves living there, and too much mess and personal belongings in the way can cloud their judgement.  It was time for action!

We spent most of the weekend packing Sally’s stuff into boxes to be taken over to her boyfriend’s house in anticipation of the move, and generally had a good old clear out.  Once all the junk was gone, the living room certainly looked bigger.  But something still wasn’t quite right.  It was the effect that the large dark purple sofa was having, combined with the striped green arm chairs and floral ottoman.  You get the picture.  Sally’s mish-mash of secondhand furniture wasn’t doing the room any favors.  What she needed was some carefully selected slipcovers to do the place justice.

We got online and I showed Sally the Sure Fit website.  She was immediately impressed by the cheap prices and wide variety of slipcover fabrics.  We decided that what the room desperately needed was some neutral colors.  Although not to Sally’s usual flamboyant taste, if she was serious about staging her home to sell, she need to go neutral in order to open up the room and show it to its full advantage.  She decided on some plain oatmeal color stretch slipcovers made from faux suede for the sofa and chairs, along with a taupe stretch pique ottoman cover.

A few days later I got an email from Sally, enclosing a photo of her living room and thanking me for my help.  I couldn’t believe the difference.  The slipcovers really had succeeded in transforming the room and making it appear light and spacious.  I’m sure it will help sell the house and expect Sally to have secured that sale before too long.