Debra Gould is The Staging Diva

Center of The City Magazine, May 2006
“Debra Gould is The Staging Diva”

Story by Karen Bridson-Boyczuk
Photography by Jill Kitchener

Excerpt from Centre of the City Magazine:

They are known as “fluffers.”

They are the creative minds realtors depend on in their effort to make top dollar on the sale of a home. With a bit of paint, a few selected touches, an imaginative eye and a lot of elbow grease, the work of these “home stagers,” as they are more commonly known, can quite dramatically increase the selling price of a home. . . .

Staging Diva Debra Gould, says homeowners without any plans for selling can make drastic improvements to the look of their homes simply by following a few ‘home fluffing’ techniques.

“So often my clients say, ‘wow, and to think, (my house) could have looked like this for the last five years,” says Gould, president of Six Elements Inc. (www.stagingdiva.com).

Gould says there are some very basic steps people can take to ‘fluff’ their homes for themselves.

“The biggest problem I see in people’s homes is inadequate lighting,” she says. “Many people live in very dark, dingy homes and they don’t even know it.” . . .

Beyond small clutter items, many homes have too much furniture for the size of the rooms, she says. . . .

“So it’s important to take a look at how else the furniture can be arranged in a room,” she says. “Often people will say, ‘oh, it never occurred to me to put that there.’ . . .

Mismatched bedding and towels are another pet peeve of Gould’s. . . . “I’m always buying sheets and duvets and towels to go into the homes I stage,” she says. “It gives you a nice focal point and can make such a huge difference to the way a room looks.” . . .

“If you’ve got a basement filled with things you are planning to fix one day, just get rid of them. People feel liberated when they knock those things off of their to-do lists. It’s very freeing.” . . .

Gould has staged hundreds of homes, ranging in price from $190,000 to $1.5 million. . . .