Good feng shui doesn’t mean placing statues of dragons and elderly Chinese deities all over your flat. Lots of feng shui principles make sense not only in the smoky, joss paper-scented dens of dodgy fortune-tellers but also in the real world.
Whether you dismiss feng shui as a load of rubbish (or just plain common sense) or have your own master, there’s no harm trying out some of these tricks that can help you sell your home at a better price.
1. Keep Your Entrance Bright
Feng shui fans believe the entrance to your home should be a “bright hall”: big, well-lit and welcoming. I don’t know about you, but if I were viewing a property and the front door looked like the entrance to the Ten Courts of Hell in the bowels of the earth, I probably would not buy it.
Get rid of all the dead potted plants and decaying shoes that have been collecting at your front door and install some lights to welcome prospective buyers.
2. Avoid Too Much Darkness
Feng shui is all about the balance between yin and yang, light and dark. If your interior is shadowy enough to make Marilyn Manson or the Addams Family feel right at home, please repaint those black walls a more cheerful colour and, unless you’re hiding kidnapped children in the house, let in some natural light.
3. Get Rid of Clutter
You might have painstakingly collected all your kids’ old assessment books for the last 20 years in hopes of selling them to desperate parents on the black market in the event of a large-scale disaster.
Or maybe you have a collection of creepy dolls. Whatever it is, keep all your clutter out of sight. If a prospective buyer trips over some junk you left on the floor, it’s all over.
4. Position Furniture Wisely
Nothing makes expensive furniture look cheaper than lousy placement. Your sofa might be made of leather from the same cows wagyu beef comes from, but if your visitors can only see it from behind when they step into the living room, they’re not going to be too impressed. Also make sure prospective buyers do not get jabbed by any sharp, menacing corners or trapped in between the furniture.
5. Use Art to Create the Right Atmosphere
There’s a reason feng shui masters tell their clients to put up paintings of flowers in bloom, idyllic mountain scenes or energetic horses and not posters featuring indie bands or political manifestos. The art on your walls is not there to impress people with how cool or culturally-relevant you are but to help them imagine themselves living there.
Bonus Tip: Water fixtures at the front of the house are meant to bring luck, as are angled doors. Keep a look out the next time you’re walking around a private estate! Water features, unfortunately, aren’t the sort of thing you can pick up at Daiso for $2 so if you are looking to renovate your home, you should definitely compare renovation loan rates first.
What are some tricks you use when trying to sell your home? Let us know in the comments!