Any time you take on a renovation, remodel, or flip project, the one inevitable question everyone will ask is “What color do we use?”
Certainly, you will need to make color decisions related to your project. Even if you’re simply staging a home to put up for sale, the question of color will always come up.
Understanding the power of color and how to use it to your advantage is a tool you can rely on for all your real estate investments.
With the number of different colors available, it may feel overwhelming to try to understand each one. After all, there are 11 primary colors, 10 million shades of colors, and 16 million hues of color. But fear not! You don’t need to be an expert in color psychology for every color! Paying attention to how you feel around a certain color will, over time, be one of your best teachers. Focus on learning what to look for in color and how to apply it in your real estate investments. Pay attention to how people are using color to control your decisions.
Let’s look at the example of the “Little, but Mighty Cottage” flip to understand how the power of color drew in a buyer.
The main colors used in the cottage were yellow, orange, and red. These are very bold, big, strong colors that always create strong emotional responses. Using them worked with this house because it is small. The larger the home, the more simple you will want to keep the colors. The smaller the home, the busier you can go with your color choice.
That’s not to say you can’t use these colors in a bigger home. Rather, the smaller the home, the more color you can apply as a whole.
Yellow, red, and orange are some of the most important and powerful colors you can use to help sell a property.
Here’s how to integrate these colors into your investments so they can influence without being overpowering.
Yellow is the color that will help seal the deal. It screams optimism. It’s the color everyone pays attention to and it encourages mental processing and conversation.
Yellow is the color associated with positive emotions. Because of its association with the sun, it gives off a sense of warmth, comfort and welcoming. Yellow houses often sell 10 times faster than any other color. One reason is the color yellow stays with you. After a day of home shopping, the yellow house will be the one your mind cannot stop thinking about.
Orange creates excitement, happiness, and enthusiasm. It infers fairness and affordability. Orange is associated with fun, pleasure, and enjoyment. It gives the feeling of newness, of being in style, up to date, hip, and cool.
Red is a color that will be remembered. It’s the first color that comes to mind when you are trying to recall something. It stands out in a crowd because it draws your attention to it. It creates strong emotional reactions and increases your heart rate. It symbolizes love and passion.
A Personal Example
You will always find at least one of the above three colors in my renovated and staged homes, no matter how big or small they are. Learning from experience myself, it really was not until one of my open houses that I realized the power my use of color in renovations had.
Early one Saturday morning I had agreed to meet my real estate agent at one of my renovations where we were having an open house. I got there before anyone to open the house, turn lights on, and start a pot of coffee. When I pulled up, I found a young couple peeking through all the windows of my renovated property. I asked if they were there for the open house. They said, “No, we are getting ready to put our own house up for sale, and our real estate agent asked us to meet here at your open house to get ideas.
This particular renovation was a large home, so I scaled way back on the amount of high-energy colors. In this renovation, I added red flowers around the front door and brought them inside, using them as accents throughout the house. The interior paint was a very soft, light yellow.
The three colors described here have powerful descriptive value. These colors drive wonderful emotions and can create positive feelings for any buyer who views a home. Of course, many other colors have great emotional powers as well. However, I have found that adding even just a touch of one of these warm colors to every project can be a great tool to help buyers go from feeling that they just “like it” to feeling they “love it.” Color is one tool you have that will help you to create positive emotions about the way a buyer feels, thinks, and reacts, especially when it comes to buying a home for themselves.
Michele Van Der Veen is host of Good Day segments, including Flip It, Decorate Like a Designer, and Stage to Sell. She started her career in real estate investing more than 30 years ago.
A published author, Van Der Veen has been recognized and featured in international magazines for her unique approach to interior design. Acquiring a formal education from the Interior Designers Institute of California, her experience stems from building custom homes to flipping more than 100 homes and working in commercial real estate development alongside her father at a young age. Not afraid to push the limit on her own designs and investments, Van Der Veen will often be heard reassuring her team about her decisions by saying “Don’t worry, we are the comps!”
For more on Van Der Veen’s work or to contact her, visit iHeartHomescorp.com.
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