Selling a home is always a stressful process, but preparing your home to attract the most buyers and command top dollar doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. One of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to update your home prior to listing is with a fresh coat of interior and exterior paint. Repainting your home before putting it on the market accomplishes several goals. A neutral color palette gives it mass buyer appeal. Covering flaws conceals imperfections for a like-new appearance. Complementary colors modernize each room and give the home a cohesive style. Professionally applied new paint impresses buyers and makes your home memorable when they view multiple properties. The bottom line is that investing in professional painting services can maximize your home’s value and return on investment. Read on for ten compelling reasons to call residential painters before you list your home for sale.
1. Make a Great First Impression
The first impression of your home sets the tone for the rest of the showing and can make or break a potential sale. Outdated, chipped, faded, or otherwise flawed paint on the exterior gives buyers a poor first impression and makes them wonder what other issues are hiding. A fresh, seamless coat of neutral exterior paint done professionally by residential painters gives your home an instant facelift. It presents a welcoming, move-in-ready vibe and appeals to the masses of buyers. This initial positive feeling can set the stage for buyers to overlook other minor flaws and make a competitive offer. Don’t lose a potential sale by neglecting the exterior paint.
2. Lighten and Brighten Dark Rooms
Dark, bold, or accent wall paint colors may fit your personal style, but they often don’t show well or appeal to most homebuyers. Dark rooms appear smaller, outdated, and awkward. Painting walls in light, neutral shades makes any room feel more open, airy, and spacious. This effect is especially important in small, enclosed rooms like bathrooms and basement spaces. Illuminating these cramped areas helps buyers visualize the possibilities. Don’t rely on buyers to see past inappropriate paint colors. Hire residential painters to expertly transform dim rooms by lightening the walls, trim, and ceilings for maximum brightness.
3. Update an Outdated Color Scheme
Interior and exterior paint colors come in and out of style over the years just like clothing fashion. What was popular in one decade can appear gaudy and dated just a few years later. If your home still has paint colors from the 1990s or early 2000s, it will look tired and outdated to today’s buyers. Updating to more classic, neutral interior shades and a complementary exterior color scheme makes your home feel fresh, current, and move-in ready. Professional residential painters stay on top of the latest trends and can recommend new paint colors that will have broad buyer appeal for a quick sale.
4. Cover Marks and Imperfections
Even walls that are in fairly good shape accumulate minor flaws over the years. Small scuffs, nail holes, chips, cracks, and other imperfections may not be noticeable under your furniture but will jump out at buyers touring an empty home. These slight blemishes make walls look dingy and worn. A fresh coat of paint applied by skilled residential painters can hide these imperfections, leaving walls looking new and flawless. Don’t let minor cosmetic issues detract from your home’s value when a professional paint job can remedy them.
5. Repair Damaged Areas
In addition to small marks and holes, home walls develop more significant damage that requires repairs before painting. Large cracks in plaster and drywall, bubbling or peeling wallpaper, water stains, and more may exist under current paint. Painting without addressing underlying issues wastes time and money. Your residential painting contractor should inspect all walls and make necessary repairs like patching holes, smoothing textures, replacing drywall, and priming stains before painting. Don’t cut corners by painting over problems. Repair damaged areas completely for lasting results.
6. Update a Tired Kitchen or Bathroom
Kitchens and bathrooms are often the rooms that sell a home, so it’s crucial these spaces look updated and appealing. Dated wallpaper, cabinetry, fixtures, and tile can give buyers the impression everything needs to be replaced. This assumption lowers buyers’ perceived value of your home. Simply painting the walls, cabinets, and trim in these rooms provides an instant mini-makeover that modernizes the space on a budget. Fresh, light paint makes the space feel clean, bright, and spacious. Painted cabinets look like new again. Accent walls in complementary colors add personality. Residential painters can recommend paint sheens for each surface that maximize the transformation.
7. Enhance Curb Appeal
A home’s exterior sets the stage when buyers first drive up for a showing. Peeling paint, faded colors, cracked siding, and other visible exterior flaws make a terrible first impression and turn buyers away before they even go inside. A cohesive, new exterior paint color scheme instantly improves curb appeal. Contrasting trim colors that pop add personality. Using quality exterior paints and professional residential painters ensures a flawless, seamless application that impresses buyers. This small investment can boost perceived home value and elicit more offers.
8. Update Wood Trim and Doors
Even if your walls are in decent shape, cracked, peeling, or faded wood trim/baseboards, doors, and built-in cabinetry scream “dated.” These high-use wood elements show their age faster as the finish breaks down. Painting provides an inexpensive update. Coordinating trim and walls unifies each room’s look. Contrasting hues on these elements make them stand out. Distressed wood finishes are also trendy. Don’t ignore worn wooden features that detract from updated walls. Incorporate them into the new color scheme.
9. Minimize Odors and Stains
Kitchens and bathrooms accumulate cooking odors, soap scum, mold, and other stenches in the air and stains on the walls over time. These embedded smells linger and turn off buyers touring your home. Painting walls and ceilings with odor-blocking primer and stain-covering topcoats contains odors and visibly conceals stains. Higher sheen paints also resist new stains and are easy to clean. Don’t rely solely on air fresheners to mask odors during showings. Seal in smells and cover stains with professional painting prior to listing.
10. Paint Ceilings Bright White
Today’s buyers love bright, white ceilings that make rooms appear tall, airy, and spacious. Ceilings painted or stained dark colors lower the perceived height. Repainting ceilings with a flat, bright white paint also creates visual contrast against colored walls that frames each room beautifully. The clean, smooth white overhead draws the eye upward and expands the feel of the space. Don’t ignore this simple ceiling update that improves the look of every room.
Painting your home before listing it for sale helps it shine at showings and look its best in photos. With a small time and financial investment, fresh paint makes an outstanding impression on buyers, translating into lucrative offers and top sale prices. According to Forbes, interior painting has one of the highest returns on investment when it comes to home improvement projects. Interior painting routinely has ROIs of over 100%, which is excellent if you plan to sell your home. It can also help to minimize the amount of time your home sits on the market after listing it, and neutral colors help buyers envision themselves living in your home. Contact our professional residential painters at The Oregon Painting Company today for a quote on expertly repainting your home prior to listing it.
