Market Ready

A. Although you might not feel like making the bed on busy mornings, it’s essential to do so — with care — when your home is on the market. That might seem obvious, but Wendy Jackson, senior vice president for international sales at Nest Seekers International in New York, said she had encountered numerous apartments where owners had left the bedroom a mess for showings.

“It doesn’t show well if it looks like somebody has just gotten out of bed,” she said, adding that first impressions are everything, and an unsightly tangle of blankets is off-putting. “The bedroom is important because people will visualize themselves there, and the possibility of resting there,” she said.

To make the bed appear as clean and serene as possible, Ms. Jackson suggested, use white sheets and neutral-colored covers. “You don’t have to spend a lot of money,” she said. “You can have one crisp white set of sheets that you buy on sale.”

Pillowcases are particularly important, she noted, because they’re usually visible above the covers, so buy a new set. “I usually even press them when I’m doing a staging,” she said.

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