Designing to Sell From Design Star Challenge 2

For their second Design Star Challenge, the remaining nine contestants split into three teams of three and were challenged to design rooms in a house that's been on the market for eight months!

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Hide CaptionShow CaptionThis room suffers greatly from bad wallpaper, terra-cotta-look flooring and dark brown cabinetry. By painting the walls a more neutral color, Donna, Temple and David widen the kitchen's appeal to a greater range of buyers and update the look.

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By Vern Yip

It's important to allow potential buyers to get excited about visualizing how their lives could unfold in a space. This is especially true in a kitchen, which is the nucleus of most homes and where the majority of families spend a significant amount of time. The challenge of getting this room more market ready becomes toning down some of the blatantly outdated elements as well as neutralizing some of the existing design to appeal to a wider audience.

Specifically, this room suffers greatly from bad wallpaper syndrome (pastel teacups appeal to a pretty limited crowd) and an abundance of terra-cotta-look flooring that clashes badly with more formal, dark brown cabinetry. By painting the walls a more neutral color (see next photo), Donna, Temple and David widen the kitchen's appeal to a greater range of buyers and update the look. Neutrals are the hardest paint colors to pick since there is a tremendous range. On TV at least, this particular neutral didn't work all that well with the tones of the existing flooring and faded a bit on camera. Something with more bite and a slightly warmer undertone would have solved both issues.