How to stage your ski home

If you’re selling a property, you need to appeal to the widest possible market of buyers. This is even more the case with ski homes, as the market is so diverse and international – you could have interested parties from Europe, from the United States, China or anywhere else around the globe. This means that it’s crucial to stage your ski home. In other words, you need to show it at its best, in a style that will sell. Here’s how.

1. Keep things neutral

It can seem a shame if you’ve spent a lot of effort personalising your property, but the first step to stage your ski home is to make sure that the interior looks neutral. If any bedrooms have been painted bright colours, for instance, it’s a good idea to repaint in a neutral scheme. Try to keep colour to smaller pieces, such as cushions, rather than anything that would require the buyer to change, like feature walls.

This helps turn it into a ‘blank canvas’, for which it’s much easier for potential buyers to envisage their own plans, and helps to appeal to the broadest possible market. It’s rare that someone will fall in love with a neutral décor and want to keep it exactly as it is, but it’s also rare that someone will strongly dislike it – which can be the case with a more individualised interior design.

2. Take advantage of lighting

Take advantage of lighting to keep it looking cosy. This is especially the case with many ski homes, as the traditional style means you’ve the natural advantage of a home with a ‘warm’ interior. Make the most of it with low-level lighting along the walls at different heights to avoid too much shadow, and avoid harsh bulbs. A golden glow will look much more welcoming.

3. Remove any clutter

You’ll often hear a maxim that staging is the start of the removals process. In a way, when you stage your ski home, you’re killing two birds with stone! Start by packing away any ‘signature’ or ‘accent’ pieces that dominate a space, and then move to ornaments, personal photographs and the like. If you want anything on the sides or tables, try using flowers or plants, instead.

4. Make use of greenery

As touched on above, if you do want to add accents to the property, try using plants or flowers, especially if you’re showing during the summer seasons. A risk when you stage your ski home, or any home, is that it goes far enough in the other direction that it looks sterile, so flowers and plants can help to make it look lived-in. If you do have an outdoor space, make sure everything is tidy, plants are dead-headed and so on.

5. Define each room’s purpose

Once you’ve lived in a space for a while, you’ll often find some rooms end with several different purposes – that spare bedroom becomes a study, for example. For the purposes of selling, when you stage your ski home, keep it clear what each room’s main function is. If you’ve got three bedrooms, show them as three bedrooms.

Selling your home internationally

Staging your ski home is the first step to a successful sale, and, with our new partnership with Juwai.com, your listing on SnowOnly will reach an ever-growing audience of millions.

Selling internationally does mean dealing with the foreign exchange markets, however. The money you receive for your sale will change value from minute to minute – so find out about locking in a fixed exchange rate in our Property Buyer’s Guide to Currency.