Pottery Barn~Target Marketing

Some flowers to brighten your day to begin!

Enough of you said, "Yes" to more decorating tips and posts so here is another one! Thanks for letting me know of your interest as I like to write what you want to read.

In real estate, target marketing is essential. Every house needs to appeal to the highest number of potential buyers but you also have to be aware of what demographic will be looking at your home. Will your buyer be an executive looking to upgrade or relocate to a new area? Will the potential buyer most likely be a family with children? Does your home and area appeal more to a retirement age group, single adults, or first time buyers? When I stage a home I take all of this into consideration before doing my design plan.

This week we did a home in a great location. It is, however, a small condo with a savvy homeowner that wanted to target market to the young upwardly mobile, single person or couple and first time buyer.

I love it when my client does my work for me...I have never had one that knew much about target marketing until this homeowner! This woman was my dream client. She was receptive to all my ideas and direction and did everything I suggested. This was so refreshing and I guarantee it will sell her home much more quickly and for a higher price. A hard working, cooperative client makes all the difference. (Note to self when it is time to sell your home!)


My client wanted me to do a Pottery Barn look as she had actually asked some twenty somethings what they would like to see if they were looking for a home. Brilliant, don't you think?

One thing that made this project so delightful was that it is vacant and empty. Before it was staged the kitchen was remodeled along with both bathrooms. New wood laminate flooring was installed downstairs. Upstairs it has new carpeting and each bathroom has updated flooring, cabinetry, and fixtures as well. This made a tremendous improvement to the property. I assisted my client in selecting some of it including the paint colors, etc. and so when I arrived to stage it ~everything was like new and coordinated and ready to be designed.

This home owner understood one very important element to selling her home. You must invest money in making the best presentation possible, IF you want a short market time and the highest possible selling price. Also she paid attention to the details. The competition out there is fierce.

This client was also willing to rent furniture to make sure everything was good quality and the proper scale and the right style for the look she wanted. I use Cort Furniture for all my clients and I love going down to the showroom and picking out an entire household of furnishings to make it work. The person at Cort that is the most knowledgeable and helpful to me is Iuliana.

The only thing that the client already had and wanted to use was the master bedroom set and since she sells Ralph Lauren bedding online, she wanted me to use the bedding ensemble she had chosen. The bedding is an aqua and cream set so aqua was the color I wanted to feature. When you have a small home keeping the colors consistent makes it flow better and look bigger. So with aqua in mind and PB, I set out to find what could help create a Pottery Barnesque look, in a great neighborhood, for a first time buyer.

I know you like before and after photos but
this house was nearly empty so most of the rooms
looked something like this a few days ago.

Anything would be better than empty, right?
Only 5% of the population can visualize how their furniture
would fit and look when looking at an empty room.
Here is what it looks like now...
Double click the photos to see more details.

The living room has light, neutral, contemporary upholstered furniture. Most of the art work in the house features geometrics. The zany area rug has several colors in it and includes the predominate colors through out of aqua and pumpkin, black and brown. The geometric figure that is most dominate in this room is the circle.

Taken from the stairway landing.

The wall in the living room opposite the front door.
An entry is a great place to put a mirror.
It is said that most people just love
seeing themselves when they walk into a place!
Funny, huh?

I wish you could see this piece better. It has nine drawers and they are painted black and brown and aqua and goes great with the area rug. The silver-toned, round mirror compliments the other round features of the room.

The dining area is connected to the

end of the living room and also the kitchen forming an 'L'.

In the kitchen and dining area I stuck primarily to the aqua and black. I selected this round table for its modern design and it was the smallest table they had at Cort.

This is a small area and is also the walk way to the patio so I had to allow for getting to the slider. Round is better in a situation like this as it prevents possible injuries if you were to accidentally run into the table walking through. Note that the chairs are not placed at 12-3-6-and 9 positions in relationship to the slider, but at 10-2-4 and 8. This gives you a lot more walking room. It also adds interest to the table setting. Try this even with a square table if you have limited space. Angle the table as a diamond instead of a square to your slider or wall. You will be amazed!

I used a mirror to visually enlarge the space and to connect the kitchen and dining area. When staging sometimes it is fun to 'over stage' an area and use a little whimsy. I used the large, wooden, black flower with the bling as the centerpiece on the table~ just to be an eye catcher and to tie into a black charger on the counter that actually has rhinestones around the edge. It adds a little youthfulness and fun.

I kept the kitchen really simple as it is small
and I wanted it to give it an open, airy look.

Upstairs the condo has a master bedroom, one bathroom
and a secondary bedroom which I did as an office.
The home office with faux computer.


In the office the same type of geometric, modern art has
been used along with the black, brown and pumpkin colors.

It is nearly impossible to photograph a small bathroom but I wanted to show you what I came up with for the towels. I found and purchased this art piece and remembered I had some black and white towels in the warehouse with a design very similar to the design at the top of the picture. I thought it might be fun to combine the black and white and orange and this is the result.

Double click to see the pattern on the picture.

Here is the Master Bedroom and the aqua we started with.

The area rug in the living room allowed me to add in some other
colors to the entire condo and still keep it flowing.

These two photos not the greatest but gives
you an idea of the rest of the master.

I enjoyed this project. Although I have staged lots of condos, I have primarily worked with executive and family home buyers in the past. Having someone request modern design was a new experience. I discovered I had to buy a lot of new things for this home. I haven't had to do that in a long time as I do have tons of inventory...it just was not suited to this house. And on top of that, the last house I did also had a lot of aqua so the accessories I might have been able to use were out.

This project proved to me once again that it doesn't matter so much what you are working with, but rather where you put it, when you are designing a room. It may not be your taste but, with the proper design principles implemented, you can get great results. All I can hope for is my next client to be just like this one!

And now it is Friday and I am beat! I am planning to do some relaxing things today to rest my brain before the weekend. Have a great one!