How To Make Your House Stand Out Just Enough To Buyers

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When you’re flipping a new home - or even living on one with a view to potentially moving in in the future - it’s easy to become frustrated by the advice you’re given. You need to make yout house stand out! People won’t buy it if they don’t remember it, after all. And yet, you need to make sure that your house doesn’t stand out too much - because too many unique little touches will scare off buyers! So there you are, stood by some imaginary uniqueness scoreboard, trying to do enough to make your house stand out, but at the same time not wanting it to be too obvious. What exactly do realtors expect of you?

Well, keep that imaginary scoreboard in mind because yes, you do want to land somewhere along the middle of a spectrum that begins with “bland and forgettable” and ends with “gold-leaf wallpaper in the bathroom”. You do want to achieve a certain level of unforgettable, but not the kind of unforgettable that means people are still seeing your master bedroom when they close their eyes at night. And below, we can help with a few tips as to what that can mean.

Clean as a whistle

Every buyer will have their own priorities when it comes to the kind of house they want to buy, different colors they prefer to others and different architectural styles, but at the end of the day everybody wants the place to feel fresh and clean, and so when it comes to open houses and viewings, you must have the place sparkling clean inside and out - and that means as far as the sidewalk, because otherwise you’re not going to have that curb appeal. If you’ve got an open house coming up, it’s worth paying for professional cleaners to do a proper deep clean.

Add touches of personality

If you love a bit of color in a home decor, then it’s more than fine to paint, or paper, the walls in eye-catching shades to really make them stand out. But when you come to sell the house, you will have to be aware that anything idiosyncratic will narrow the field of potential buyers - at least, if it is permanent. You can bring outstanding touches of personality to the house in other ways, though. Wall art, brightly colored window blinds and rugs can all add that dash of individuality, without making any potential buyer think that they’ll be stuck with something they don’t want. Arrange for a rug cleaning service to do a sweep of any rugs in the house before a viewing. This way they’ll really pop, and catch the eye without being an eyesore.

Get the framing right

When people view your house, the main thing they will be left with is a series of mental snapshots of what they saw, so playing to the strengths of the house is essential. Consider this a way of playing to the natural advantage your house has been given. If it gets excellent natural light in daytime, keep the blinds up and the areas around the windows free of clutter. If there is a way of approaching the house that takes the viewer through an area of particular interest or beauty, give them directions that take in that route. The better an all-round experience they have when viewing your home, the more likely they are to want to put in an offer.

Lead them up the garden path, literally

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Doing too much to the interior of your home risks the viewer looking at it and finding it a bit “too much”. Adding to the exterior carries no such problems though, and offers the opportunity to bring a set-piece into the mix without it overwhelming anyone. Cleaning up the path and planting flowers around the border - smaller blooms that won’t get out of control and crowd the path - will make the trip from car to home that bit more indulgent, and at the same timeit’s something that they don’t have to keep if they don’t want to.


It’s always tough to strike a balance between not enough and too much. Often the best answer is to make telling improvements in areas where it doesn’t have an overwhelming effect on the whole of the piece. With that done, you can then attract the widest possible range of potential buyers, and increase the chance of an offer that will really make the most of your efforts. Striking that balance will make all the difference.