Home Selling Guide: Preparing Your House For Sale: Child's Bedroom & Study

If you have children and are selling a home, the chances are that any potential buyers may also have children.

Don't hide this fact. A child's bedroom needs to look like a child's bedroom: a place to play, to retreat to when tired, to study and a place of comfort.

Having said this, work may well need to be done to ensure that the room is clean, tidy and has good storage space. For this you will need your child to co-operate.

Let them join in and make sure your child looks at the changes more as making a new room rather than taking their things away. Offer rewards for keeping the room tidy.

Look to sell, give away or store toys and books that are no longer used. Consider moving some toys elsewhere in the house. Keep some posters and pictures on the walls but don't cover the walls.

As with other rooms in the house ensure that the room is also clean, odour-free and has as much natural light as possible.

The changes should not only convey an ordered child's room but also offer the suggestion that the room can be used for another purpose: a study perhaps or a guest room.

Preparing the Study

Having a study can add real value to a house or flat, as more and more people consider working from home or are simply in need of a space for their home computer. Often the study is a converted bedroom, box/utility room or dining room.

Whether creating a study or looking to improve a study it is important not to make the room too masculine or feminine. It needs to look like both a place of work as well as a place to relax at the end of the day or to browse the internet.

Keep the room tidy and if boxes of paperwork and books are stacked on the floor consider putting in shelving on walls. Perhaps add extra seating and lighting. A reading lamp and a comfy armchair can give a study an extra dimension.