This holiday season, when you have a steady traffic flow through your home and when you are rearranging decorations, take the opportunity to examine the visual interest of your living spaces! Step into a room—or ask a loved one for their perspective—and see what immediately grabs your eye. Those are the same things that will grab a buyer’s eyes, so you want to make sure the features that stand out as focal points deserve to be getting so much attention!

Essentially, this advice is Staging 101: Use a fresh perspective to see what areas need addressing. If you immediately notice a stain on the carpeting, get it cleaned. If there’s a crack in the window, get it fixed. Anything that you can’t replace or fix, do your best to downplay.

Use decorating accents to instead draw buyers towards selling points: the fireplace, the gleaming hardwood floors, the elegant crown molding. How can you do this? Consider these suggestions:

1. To Downplay the Television: Especially if you have a television in the same room as your fireplace or some other attractive centerpiece, you will want to downplay it. Try tucking the T.V. away in a cabinet or an entertainment center.
2. Focus on the Bed: In the master bedroom especially, the bed should be the center of attention. Outfit it with clean, unwrinkled sheets/comforter, adding decorative pillows if desired. To add visual height, you could try a tall headboard or dramatic art behind the bed.
3. Showcase Hardwood Floors: The best way to emphasize wood flooring is to get it in immaculate condition and clear out the space so the floors can be seen.
4. General Tips: Whether you’re highlighting built-in bookcases or an attractive dresser, there are some general rules of thumb to help:
a. Color: Designing a room to have an overall neutral theme allows you to add very noticeable pops of color as desired.
b. Fabric: Bold prints will draw attention. Sometimes a very well-constructed window will look its best simply with no accents, particularly if it boasts an impressive view. Other times, you may want to decorate the window with interesting fabrics for draperies.

Remember, the ultimate test of good design is practice. Ask your friends to give their first impressions of your reorganized rooms and see what features are popping out to them. Use their feedback, coupled with your perspective, to make the most of your home’s style!