How To Adjust Your Closed Layout Home For Potential Buyers

You may love your home's many rooms, each with a designated use — dinner parties in the dining room, entertaining in the living room, cooking in the kitchen. You might not favor mixed-use rooms where you can eat on one end, watch TV on the other end, and sit down to work in a corner. Open concept was never your thing, and you're secretly thrilled to see that open-concept floor plans might be going out of style. But when it comes time to sell your house, you may find your real estate agent recommending you take some expert advice and adjust your closed-layout home with some changes to the furniture and decor. 

Open concept is prized for the flexibility it brings to a living space. A single, large room can be interpreted and reinterpreted as your needs change. In a closed layout, a room next to the kitchen will always logically be a dining room. Open concept means you can always see what the kids are up to, but as they grow, having a separate living room for grownup parties might be preferable. Open concept homes benefit from having more natural light, a feeling of spaciousness, and a cohesive design. However, a few tweaks to a closed-concept floor plan may be all it takes to encourage a buyer to choose your home.

You don't need to start tearing down walls to improve the resale value of your home. To make the closed-concept common areas seem open, start by using the same flooring throughout the rooms for cohesion. Enlarge the openings between rooms, or simply take the doors down and finish the moldings so they look intentional. If you need the doors, try ones with large glass panels for an open feel. Also, arrange the furniture so that the view from one room into the next isn't blocked.

Natural light is your greatest resource when you're trying to open up a closed-layout home. Take down heavy drapes and replace them with light-colored minimalist curtains with clean, straight lines hung close to the ceiling so the room looks larger. To make rooms appear larger using paint, go for a bright, sunny color on the walls, and avoid using muddy hues. If you don't want to use the same color in every room, try slightly different shades of one color in each. Hang large mirrors in the living room with simple frames to reflect light from the windows. Besides that, leave hallways uncluttered and add a long, narrow runner that spans the length of the hallway.

Put yourself in the place of a potential buyer and walk through the house. There should be no obstacles to dodge like end tables or oversized side chairs. Plus, you should be able to look through every window and clearly see the outdoors. Then you'll know your closed-concept home is staged like a professional.