If you’re selling your home, replacing or adding artwork to the walls is a great way to create a clean slate for the next owners. This is why good artwork is a key part of staging your home when the time comes to do so. When we say “good artwork,” we’re not talking about the quality of the art because we’re not art critics. These tips on how to choose art for home staging will give you a better understanding of what “good artwork” means in this case.

Keep It Simple and Classy

Don’t think that an art piece being larger inherently means it’s better. The scale of your artwork should fit naturally with the scale of the wall you’re hanging it on. Covering a small-to-medium size wall in your living room with a massive painting, as beautiful as it may be, will just look obnoxious instead of stylish. Use art as an accent for the room it’s in; don’t allow it to take control of the space completely.

Keep It PG

PG isn’t an industry term—we literally mean PG as in the movie rating. Don’t hang artwork that could potentially be offensive or off-putting to buyers. Avoid any artwork with nudity, violence, and other mature content. Even if you appreciate it, not everyone will. Focus on artwork that showcases pleasant visuals like a jaw-dropping depiction of nature or even stylish, abstract imagery.

Avoid Religious Imagery

Just like with artwork depicting mature content, there’s nothing inherently wrong with religious imagery. When you’re living in a home, you can put as much religious artwork on display as you want. That being said, if you use religious artwork to stage a home for buyers, you run the risk of personalizing your property too much. The point of staging is to strip your personality from the home and provide buyers with a solid jumping-off point to begin injecting their own personality into the home after closing the deal.

Thanks to this guide on how to choose art for home staging, you should have a better grasp of what we mean by “good artwork” in regard to this process, which means you can finally begin interior staging. The artwork you choose for staging should fit naturally and beautifully in the space you hang it and, most importantly, it shouldn’t have imagery on it that might alienate buyers. Don’t worry—once you move into your new place, you can hang any art that you want.