Clean / de-clutter – 973% Average Return on Investment

I completely agree with this one. Eliminating clutter will:

1. Make your home look bigger
2. Hide anything that potential buyers would find tacky (more on this in staging)

Lighten and brighten – 865% Average Return on Investment

Lightening and brightening your home will help make your home look larger, and are less offensive to a majority of buyers. Opening windows and shades and letting light and breezes into the home will create a more postive aura in the home for potential buyers.

Yard – 426% Average Return on Investment

I completely agree that curb appeal does affect the price of a home. Improving your landscaping and lawn will make you house look more presentable. Remember what they say about first impressions!

Staging – 251% Average Return on Investment

Now that it is a buyers market, sellers need to do things to get an edge on the comparable properties on their block, to stand out.

I think home staging may be a solution. Although you could update all your furniture to help your home sell, its probably the last thing you need to be spending money on at this point, plus why buy furniture if you know you’re going to have to move it soon anyways?

The fact is, although people do try to zone out the furniture and see a room for what it can be, I believe that tacky coffee table has a subconscious effect on potential buyers.

So why not try a home stager? It will place the newest, latest and greatest furniture in your house, and create a better impression of the house.

Paint interior – 148% Average Return on Investment

Now that you are updating via staging, lightening and brightening, and doing the little things to help your home look better, don’t forget to patch up the interior paint jobs and repair small cracks and holes.

As with any trend, many taste-makers are predicting that because stainless steel appliances are available at any price point, and they have become ubiquitous in many remodeled kitchens, consumers will tire of this finish.

As a result, manufacturers such as Jenn-Air are rolling out applicances that feature an “oiled bronze” finish. The look is supposed to present a more “warm” look to kitchens, a contrast to what they claim can be a cold look that stainless steel applicances can present.

Stainless does have its shortfalls, fingerprints show up, and many stainless-steel refrigerators are not magnetic, but I personally like the look. Just something to consider.

Mirrored anything

Mirrored ceilings, closet doors, and kitchen backsplashes give your home a look that hearkens back to the 70′s and 80′s. Mirrors have long been a trick used to make a space look larger, but they are a pain in the butt to clean, and look tacky. As the sizes of homes continue to expand, a heavily-mirrored abode screaming ‘aging bachelor’.

There are exceptions. A nicely-framed mirror in a dining room or living room is still a great accent for the dining room or living room.

Uniform Design

This look is starting to look outdated, buying matching living room or bedroom sets. Matching furniture styles to architectural styles is not necessary anymore as newer designers are adopting a fusion style of decorating homes.

I believe that these mismatched collections of furniture in rooms give the house are more inviting a cozy atmosphere. Be careful to coordinate colors and don’t go too crazy, so it looks like a work in progress though. If you have a ‘vision’ for a room, then finish that look before you put it on the market.

Stainless steel

Its a pain to clean, but buyers love the look. You can either spend all your time attempting to keep these clean by constantly wiping away fingerprints, or go with the newer ‘brushed metal’ variation on stainless steel, or go with nickel, a personal favorite of mine. Some trendsetters indicate that the new look with include the ‘full overlay’ look, where a refrigerator or dishwasher front with match the cabinets surrounding it.

Conclusion

Well, there you have it. A few ideas of what I think trends in home decorating trends are moving away from. Remember that quality trumps all, and if a look is extremely bold and popular, it will probably be dated in no time.

While it is important to remember that your house is your house and you can decorate it as you see fit, you also have to consider that you will most likely want to or have to sell your house eventually. If you are worried that your home improvement look will look dated in the near future, remember that quality and durability are more important that being “trendy”.

Below are a few things I believe you should avoid when redecorating in 2006, but remember, this is my opinion.

Bold-colored appliances

Are they out yet? I hope so, because a rehash of this terrible idea is the last thing anybody needs. Maybe I’m biased because I was tortured by my parents’ “harvest yellow” kitchen appliances for the first decade of my life, but buying a bright orange dishwasher limits your future decorating options, and will look dated in no time.

Oh yeah, same goes for bold-colored rooms (they often make a room look smaller, require many coats for a good finish, and few will share your opinion of the particular hue you’ve chosen), but repainting a room is much easier than buying new appliances when you want to sell your home.

Above-counter or “vessel sinks”

As the price of these sinks continue to decline, many more people are starting to install these trendy glass bowl sinks that sit atop countertops. They look great, but are hard to keep clean because of their transparency. Some shallow models splash, and since they sit on top of the counter instead of in it, it may be difficult for small children to wash their hands. Leave these trendy sinks where they belong: in trendy bars and restaurants, where they can afford to have some clean them constantly, and where no one will be leaving their toothpaste stains in them.

Built-in flat panel TVs

TVs mounted to walls and in many cases “framed” to look like a picture present a lot of commitment. Sometimes placing a TV in a place where it looks good; say, above a fireplace, doesn’t mean its the best place to watch a TV. Mounting your flat-panel like a piece of art makes it harder to move, and then you have to deal with covering up whatver you placed on the wall to mount the TV with.

Awnings

Of course, this is a no-brainer, but if you have awnings, I’d remove them sooner rather than later. Just get a nice set of blinds or some sort of window treatments.

My brother recently bought a house and sent me pics, and I noticed he had awnings. By the time I got there to see the house, the awnings were gone. Removing them was the first thing he did.

To be continued…