The Best Candles for Selling Your House
Summer is home buying season, and many homeowners are wondering what they can do to help sell their place. Fragrance is one of the many tools in the home seller’s arsenal, and while it might be a more unusual one, it definitely shouldn’t be overlooked. Below, we offer our three top tips for using scents to sell your home, and then round up the best candles for selling your house.
Tip no. 1: Start with a neutral scent. A candle won’t do much good if your house smells funky due to mold, mildew, or other gross factors. We put together an ultimate guide on how to make your house smell good, but the basic gist of it is to clean the entire place top to bottom, paying special attention to trouble areas such as the kitchen and bathroom. Before you burn any candles, you should walk around and do a smell test with your nose to make sure that you’ve taken care of anything that smells bad. Remember that candles and other scents are there to enhance, not to cover up.
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Tip no. 2: Choose one scent for the whole home. Buyers will appreciate a whiff of the scent, but you don’t want to overpower them with a distracting fragrance. When you’re on your own relaxing at home, you might like to have different scents for each room, but this can be overwhelming during a house showing. Choose one base scent that you can use throughout the house to provide a cohesive scent experience.
Tip no. 3: Decide how to deliver the fragrance. Burning candles is an excellent way to make your home smell good, but it’s not the only one. Think about the best way to release fragrances all around your home. For example, reed diffusers are great for smaller areas like bathrooms and entryways, and they don’t require an open flame or power cord. If you’re worried about leaving open flames around, you can opt for an electric diffuser that automatically shuts off after a certain amount of time. Also remember that you don’t have to have a candle or diffuser in every single room — choose just a few key areas and let the scent drift through the other rooms.
Now you’re ready to choose the best candles for selling your house. As you try to decide on a scent, look for these fragrance families, which will help your home make a great impression on potential buyers.
Vanilla. One of the home selling tricks is to bake a fresh batch of cookies right before buyers arrive to make the space feel more home-like. Burning a vanilla candle can help create a similar effect without running the oven. The sweet yet mild scent of vanilla will also keep it from becoming too overpowering.
Spices. Speaking of baking cookies, spice-centered candles are another fantastic way to recreate that feeling of hominess. Look for spices such as ginger, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg as you shop for the best candles for selling your house. We especially love cinnamon scented candles for a sweet-yet-spicy fragrance that’s warm and inviting.
Citrus. If you want a fresher, more energizing scent, citrus scented candles are the way to go. Fragrances such as lemon and orange will make your home smell clean and refreshing while gently boosting the energy of any prospective home buyers. Citrus is an especially good choice for the summer months when everyone could use a bit of extra invigoration due to the heat.
Herbs. If savory is your preferred scent family, look for an herbal diffuser or candle for selling your home. Popular herbal scents include basil, rosemary, and sage, and many candles blend several together for a more nuanced fragrances. Some herbal candles can be quite pungent, so make sure to do a test run to ensure that they won’t overpower buyers as they walk through.
Woods. For a deeper, more complex scent, seek out woods such as pine, cedar, and sandalwood. Candles scented with these fragrances will offer a more nuanced yet musky scent that make your home smell of nature. These fragrances may also be used as base scents and paired with other fragrances on this list for added complexity.
Follow these tips to choose a candle scent that will sell and to increase your house’s chances of winning over potential buyers.