How Fresh Paint Can Boost Your Home's Value
In many cities and communities throughout the country, the hot real estate market has made now the perfect time to sell your home and cash in on that hard-earned equity. If you’re thinking about listing your home in the next six months, you’ll want to focus on low-cost, quick-turnaround changes to your home that will yield a high return-on-investment (ROI). These are projects that help your home sell and that you’ll get your money back on. At the top of your to-do list, add painting your home. As it turns out, painting the inside and outside of your home is a great value-boosting project to complete before listing.
In this article, we’ll explore why this is, what the benefits of interior and exterior painting are, and how to go about selecting colors that will attract and excite prospective buyers.
Add value and beauty to your home
New interior and exterior paint enhances the quality of your home by making it appear well-maintained and properly cared for—qualities that a prospective buyer will then subliminally associate with the rest of the property. This is why the homeowners who repaint the interior of their home see, on average, a 107% ROI. In fact, high-quality interior painting can add $2,000 or more in value to the home. Exterior painting also has a high return-on-investment, with the average homeowner seeing a 55% ROI and a $2,100 increase in value. The lower average ROI of exterior painting takes into account the fact that many U.S. homeowners hire a professional to paint their home, a smart decision for long-lasting value with a higher upfront cost.
Make the right first impression
Of course, repainting your home is about more than just a dollars-and-cents boost in value. It can also make your home more attractive to buyers, which means more visits, more competitive offers, and—ultimately—a higher sale price for your house.
In the real estate business, this is called “curb appeal.” But, the name itself is a bit of a misnomer these days. Curb appeal applies more broadly than just the prospective buyers who drive up to your home. Today, many prospective buyers find your home online, where they may be scrolling through hundreds of competing properties at your price point, glancing at each for mere seconds. That first picture of the outside of your home can be the difference between the right buyer scrolling on by or clicking on your listing to see more of the property.
For this reason, you want that first view of your home to be a showstopper. This is probably why 66% of realtors in a national survey agreed that homeowners planning to sell their home should paint the inside and outside prior to listing.
Choosing the right colors
Now that you’ve made the decision to paint both the inside and outside of your home prior to sale, here are the factors you should take into consideration when deciding on paint colors:
Interior Paint
Your interior paint choices should vary from room-to-room. The shades and hues that work best in the bedroom probably won’t fit in the kitchen, and vice-versa. For example, light purple is a calming, zen-invoking color, making it a good fit for a room you plan on relaxing in, such as your bedroom or living room. Blues, greens, reds, and yellows can all have the opposite effect, bringing a vibrant energy into the space; for obvious reasons, these are best used in the kitchen. Warm colors spark activity and energy, while cool colors slow things down.
This application of color theory isn’t just a cute exercise. It can actually have a subliminal impact on people touring your home. The right colors in the right rooms can influence a buyer’s perception of those rooms and how well they meet their needs. Remember: prospective buyers are walking through your home trying to imagine themselves living there. A kitchen that is alive, awake, and full of energy is much better than one that is dark, cool, and calming, because that’s probably not what most buyers need out of that particular space.
Exterior Paint
A majority of American homeowners do not have free reign to pick just any color for their home’s exterior. That’s because 53% of us live in neighborhoods and communities governed by Homeowners Associations (HOAs). These organizations set rules and standards intended to protect collective property values and the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood as a whole. One common regulation in most HOAs is a restrictive color palette that controls what shades people can paint their homes.
While this might end your dreams of painting your home, say, fuschia, it isn’t always a bad thing. First, the HOA-approved color list narrows down your choices, which can help you reach a decision faster. Second, it gives you a quick guide to what color choices will match the rest of the neighborhood. Even if your home isn’t subject to the rules of an HOA, you should still try to pick an exterior paint color that matches what the rest of your neighborhood is doing. A home that sticks out is going to have a harder time getting competitive offers.
For the best results, hire a professional
If you are repainting the interior or exterior of your home to add value ahead of listing, consider enlisting the help of a professional. Hiring a professional painter ensures that the project will be completed on-time, on-budget, and that the resulting work will be of the highest-possible quality. That last aspect is especially important: low-quality painting work that looks cheap or shoddy will not add value or attractiveness to your home in the same way that high-quality, professional-grade work will.
Want even more professional tips before starting your interior or exterior painting project? Be sure to check out this infographic...
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