Selling Houses: Payback of Window Treatments

If you're planning to show your home mainly during daylight hours, think about your selling season, market conditions, and the benefits of window treatments. Window treatment tips from innovative Design Psychology can help you sell your home for more money.

Real estate market conditions influence decisions regarding window treatments. Hot markets require fewer embellishments in order to sell, whereas increased competition from many listings similar to yours may require extras like great-looking window coverings to attract buyers.

Remember, daytime light is always best if it enters your home in from the outside, because natural daylight makes people happy, while the absence of natural daylight depresses people. When a room is too dark during the day, boosting the light with specific daytime-like lighting helps maintain an aerial emotional atmosphere.

Security and Shelter

We feel exposed in rooms with no window coverings at night, because with interior lights on, people on the street can see into our private spaces, and uncovered glass also looks like a cold, black hole at night. So window coverings are important, both from the security and psychological perspectives.

Window coverings and hardware add architectural interest to a boring room and block undesirable views. Stark walls will visually cool a room during summer days unless the hot sun streams in. In that case, light-filtering cool white fabric will bring cooling shade. In cooler seasons, more substantial window coverings can supplement a positive emotional impact with warmth, texture, and color. Fabrics will soften hard wall surfaces while increasing visual warmth on cold days.

High-end Results for Pennies

In one of our houses, we spray-painted a PVC pipe and thrift store hardware with gold leaf, covered unattractive but functional existing mini-blinds with lace curtains from Wal-Mart, and hung an antique mirror to dress up the main bedroom. The effect was inexpensive, yet stunning.

Although they're often overlooked by home sellers, carefully chosen window treatments can add impressive design details to a bare, unfurnished room, and can be the difference between selling a home and having it sit on the market.

(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.

Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips, reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhousefordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm