Painting for Profit

If you’re going to be putting your house on the market, choose paint to maximize your resale value. The paint alone will up the value, as nothing beats a fresh coat of paint as an inexpensive maintenance and decorating option. But before you start choosing color, the rules change – no longer are you painting for personal enjoyment in colors you love, but you need to paint for profit.

Paint interior trim white – it stands out better, it makes a room look more modern and it looks cleaner. Many people don’t care for trim in other colors, so play it safe and stick with whites for windows, baseboards and door frames.

Think outside the box, and the home, exterior paint may be the fix for your home’s curb appeal.

"Painting your house's exterior before you put it on the market gives the biggest bang for your fix-up buck—if you use colors that conform with your neighborhood's decorating norm," says Eric Tyson and Ray Brown in their book "House Selling for Dummies.”

New siding is an alternative to a quick fix paint job – it gives one the highest returns, over 80%, in your home's selling price.

If an interior and exterior paint job is too much for your budget or your time, at least paint the front door, the door frame, the foyer and the first room of the house that the buyers will see.

If you nix the exterior siding replacement or paint job, besides the front door, get the trim, window frames and shutters for a fresh, clean look for curb appeal.

Use neutral colors that blend in with the other homes in the neighborhood, nothing outlandish.

Brag about your paint job – make sure to mention it in your real estate listing and any ads, flyers or brochures – "fresh paint throughout" will make a buyer look closely at the paint of competing houses that may not have the fresh paint job to brag about..

If you’re using quality paint products, mention that as well – there’s nothing like a little name dropping to give you an edge.
Make sure your painting project is complete and all signs of it are stored away. Home maintenance is the last thing you want to remind a potential buyer of.

According to Realty Time magazine, the choices for exterior colors are, in order: white, gray, blue, tan or brown, cream, beige, green, yellow and red. Of those, the overwhelmingly most popular house painting color is white, with over 37% of all homeowners stating that if they were repainting a house, they would choose white.