I Asked Real Estate Pros How to Make My Home Never Smell Weird Again
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There’s a lot to consider when you’re putting your home on the market, and one of the most important factors is how potential buyers experience your home in person. First impressions are everything, after all. You can hire a home stager to make your space look its best, and a good real estate agent will help pitch your home to buyers and price it accurately. However, there’s one more component of your home’s environment that may be overlooked: how it smells.
Consider this: Human beings are, to some degree, “nose blind” to their own spaces. I know I am — the smells I come into contact with every day, all day, start to become less remarkable over time. But newcomers walking into my space will be able to pick up on everything — per Scientific American, the average human has 12 million “odor detecting cells” and can “detect at least 10,000 scents,” which is nothing to sneeze (or sniff) at.
Obviously, a house or apartment that smells funky is a huge red flag for buyers or potential renters. It’s also nice to simply live in a home that does not smell weird. But creating a nice olfactory environment is about more than just eliminating bad smells. So I asked real estate experts — the pros on making homes smell nice quickly — about how to make sure the people who enter my home (or a home they want to buy) are happy with its scent. Here’s their advice.
Clean regularly.
“First and foremost, a clean house is a happy house,” says Amber Guyton, an interior designer behind the Atlanta-based Blessed Little Bungalow. “Keep your home dust- and dirt-free with regular vacuuming, sweeping, and cleaning of surfaces. I use natural and chemical cleaners that have lighter and fresh scents like lemon and linen.”
This may seem like a no-brainer, but the key here lies in the regularity. It’s much easier to improve the scent of a home that’s generally kept in a nice, clean state than it is to scramble to deep-clean a house that has expired goods in the cupboards or mysterious stains in hard-to-reach corners.
If you’re putting your house on the market or simply want to live in a fresher-smelling space, there are some simple tasks you can add to your routine of household chores that can help. “Using items like daily shower cleaners or squeezing a lemon in the garbage disposal are easy ways to make your entire home smell more pleasant,” adds Guyton.
Open your windows for an hour a day.
“Before we launch a listing we have a schedule to get the home ready, which includes getting a cleaner in there once a week,” explains Mat Gundell, a licensed real estate salesperson with Compass in New York City who focuses on selling luxury real estate in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “Changing the sheets every single week really helps as well, [and] I like to say if we’re going live in 30 days, make sure to leave your windows open [for] one hour a day.”
Use last-minute tricks for a nice-smelling home.
It’s probably happened to you: People are coming over, and you realize with a sinking feeling that your place is smelling a bit stale. If you have an unexpected guest — or a last-minute showing — a few tricks can brighten up your space in no time.
“I love giving my hardwood floors a fresh Swiffer wipe and using Febreze products on upholstered furniture,” notes Guyton. “Whenever I have guests, I’ll spray my sofa, guest bedroom, and bathroom mat with it to give each space a fresh and inviting scent.”
You don’t have to use sprays or products, though. “Really simple ways to make your house smell good is baking cookies or making bread,” says Gundell, who adds that baking bread has become trendier lately than cookies, which is more of an old-fashioned open house trope. “Sometimes if you have really nice soap that has a clean crisp smell, taking a shower right before [people arrive] can make your bathroom smell fresh.”
The folks at Jennifer Adams, a candle and home decor company, write in a blog post that lighting a match, grinding some coffee beans, or opening a box of baking soda can also help to banish non-ideal odors that might be lurking in your home.
Know the specific scents that appeal to most buyers.
Everyone has their own scent preferences, but some fragrances are better suited to having many different people in your house. Guyton recommends scents in the realm of “fresh laundry, lemon, lavender, and soft but fruity smells.”
Sometimes, it can help to lean into the season. “My year-round candle is Anthropologie Capri Blue Volcano candle, but in the fall and winter, I’ll swap it out for pumpkin and apple smelling scents that make me smile and feel a bit more festive,“ Guyton says.
However, that might not always be what your buyers are looking for. “I like to keep [the scents] pretty neutral,” says Gundell. He also recommends looking at “high-end” items “people really gravitate towards … in other spaces in their life.” Think: stuff you’d see in fancy gyms and hotels, like Aesop soaps.
Gundell frequently utilizes diffusers and oils from Hotel Collection, a brand that makes fragrances inspired by the ones specific hotels use, like the W Hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, and even Margaritaville. He’s partial to the “My Way” variety, which includes notes of leather, sandalwood, and vetiver, but he’ll often make his decision based on what hotels he thinks a prospective buyer might stay at.
“When you’re on vacation you feel the best,” he says, so it makes sense to conjure that same luxurious, relaxing vibe in a house you’re looking to sell.
Further Reading
Everything You’ve Ever Wanted To Know About Article’s DTC Furniture
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