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Selling Houses: Design Psychology and Interior Colors

Interior colors are vitally important to selling your home quickly, and for more money. But you must always take your target market and selling season into account, using Design Psychology techniques, when choosing the colors for the inside of your home.

One of the biggest mistakes sellers make is to paint everything white, which will make the interior of the home look clean, but does nothing to make buyers feel and look good. Your goal is for your home to must make potential buyers feel and look great in your home. When you accomplish that, you'll have a sale.

Consider Your Buyers

When choosing colors, always keep your target buyers in mind. If they'll be wealthy and highly educated, you'll want to use complex muted colors in your interior paint scheme. If your buyers will be less educated and in lower income brackets, concentrate on primary or pastel colors.

Your interior colors should also echo, in slightly lighter shades, the colors you've used on the outside of the house. That will give your home a greater feeling of harmony in the buyer’s mind, and since people look better in colored rooms, your buyers will also feel better in your home. As an added bonus, buyers who liked your exterior scheme are also going to appreciate your choice of colors for the interior, which will make them more inclined to buy your home.

Consider Your Selling Season

Your color choices will also depend upon the time of year your home will be on the market. Use warm-color accents, such as reds, yellows, maroons, if you'll be selling during the fall and winter months, and cooler colors like grays, blues, and greens, if your home is going to be shown in spring and summer. Your ultimate goal is to create either the feeling of a cool desert oasis or a warm, inviting haven, depending upon the selling season.

Choosing Individual Room Colors

Consider how each room is used when choosing colors. For instance, kitchens look great and feel natural when painted with "food colors," such as celery greens and scrambled-egg yellows.

Main bedrooms are places for intimacy and serenity, so medium shades of green or blue work well during warm selling seasons, and rouge red makes a dynamic impact in cooler weather. Other bedrooms show well and feel great when painted in soft creamy tones of green, yellow, blue, or pale shell pink.

Your choice of colors will affect potential buyers in subtle, but powerful, ways, and by using the principles of Design Psychology, you can make your home much more appealing, even though your buyers won't even notice. All they'll know is that your home makes them feel good, which will make them want to buy it, and that’s the most important thing.

New concepts in Interior Design Psychology are helping home sellers net more money in today's competitive real estate market. Therefore, it's worthwhile to spend time planning the changes that will help your home sell for the highest price.

Develop a general design plan, keeping your target market and budget in mind. Your overall design plan really depends on supply and demand. How many houses are for sale in your area? How many houses sell each week? Is the selling season cold, warm, or hot? Is it a seller's or buyer's market?

If the market is moving fast and buyers are lining up to make offers for homes in your neighborhood, you can do less. But whatever your answers to the above questions, you'll still need to do a few things to make your home stand out from the competition.

Know Your Target Buyers

Think about your neighborhood and the buyers purchasing homes near yours. Are they purchasing their first home or moving up? This will be important to your marketing and design plan, since the psychological needs of the two types of buyers differ considerably.

First-time homebuyers seek to control their own environment by owning, rather than renting. Their psychological needs include:

Safety and security
Sense of place or connection
Comfort
Self-control

Move-up buyers often enjoy those benefits, too, but they're generally more interested in finding a larger home with more amenities for their comfort, self-esteem, and feelings of prestige.

Once you've determine your potential buyers, you can begin making improvements to your home that will attract them.

Budget Concerns

Spend money only on items that will make a difference in your sales price. Of all repairs, fresh paint is the best investment you can make. New kitchen appliances, upgraded bathroom features, and updated lighting fixtures will usually give a good return for your money, as well.

Sometimes, hiring professional help is worth the extra expense. Professional painters work faster and will often cost less than day laborers. Tile installers, carpet layers, and electricians also know their trades and will do a better job than most day laborers.

Contractors should have their own disability and liability insurance -- ask for a copy with your contract. Get everything in writing -- including work to be completed, costs, lists of specific materials to be used, time for completion, and payment schedule.

Psychology of Exterior Paint Colors

Take the ultimate sales price of your remodeled home into account. Certain colors, especially muted, complex shades, will attract wealthy or highly-educated buyers, whereas buyers with less income or less education will generally prefer simple colors.

A complex color contains tints of gray or brown, and usually requires more than one word to describe, such as sage green or forest brown, while simple colors are straightforward and pure. Generally, houses in the lower price range will sell faster and for more money when painted in simple tones like yellow and tan with white, blue, or green trim.

Interior Design Plans and Secrets

Create a list of work and materials you'll need for each room and then estimate the time you think it will take for each task. The more planning you do before you begin, the more time and money you'll save.

Psychology of Interior Paint Colors

Daring to use color instead of bland white walls will increase your profit potential. Did you know that Lynette Jennings tested people's perception of room size and color? A room that was painted white appeared larger to only a few people in the survey, compared to an identical room painted with a color, and the perceived difference was only about six inches! Because most people look better surrounded by color, a colored wall also makes them feel happier, and buyers will choose to buy the house that makes them feel happiest.

Entryways should bring the exterior colors of the home inside. Repeat variations of the exterior shades all the way through your home, which will make the entire home seem to be in harmony. As an added bonus, if buyers love the exterior colors, they're going to like the interior colors, as well.

Spending time planning your home's sale, rather than just listing it and then taking your chances, will net you more money, and faster!

By Jeanette Joy Fisher