Paint Mistakes That Will Make Or Break The Sale Of Your Home, According To The Stars Of Married To Real Estate

Egypt Sherrod and her husband Mike Jackson have been dazzling HGTV fans for years. The "Married to Real Estate" hosts know a thing or two about the channel's two mainstays: Selling homes and redecorating them. When selecting paint colors and styles for a home, they are the experts. When unguided, it is easy to make mistakes when painting a house. Whether you are interested in repainting to sell right now, or don't want to do major renovations when you finally leave your starter home behind, the pair knows just what mistakes to avoid. 

If you use the wrong type of paint on your fireplace, you might doom your buyers to a lifetime of stubborn dust bunnies and endless paint touch-ups. When you leave your kitchen cabinets untouched during sale preparations, you just might scare off the best buyers. You might even waste thousands of dollars repainting your home's exterior in preparation for an open house when there is a way easier way. Here are the mistakes that will make or break the selling of your home, according to Egypt and Mike. 

In the season 1 episode "Canton Get Any Better," the featured home has a major eyesore in the living room: The old fireplace. The wooden paneling surrounding it looked like it hadn't been touched in 30 years. The stones were also dark and large, contrasting with the lightness of the surrounding room. Sherrod called the fireplace a "clunker" when assessing the scene. However, fireplaces bring financial value to a home and are overall a cozy and convenient feature to have. It doesn't make sense to get rid of one, as the costs are high and the logistics are not worth it leading up to a sale. But if your fireplace is a bit outdated and ugly, leaving it unpainted as you prepare your house for the market would be a huge mistake.

Instead, just as Sherrod does in the episode, consider sprucing it up with a fresh coat of paint. "That's the same stone, I just put a wash over it and then used a satin paint on it," she said in the big reveal, proud to show off her handy work. Sherrod used satin paint on the fireplace as this finish allows for easier cleaning. Dust tends to accumulate on fireplaces, so using a paint that is quick and easy to clean is a selling point. You don't want buyers to think you did a cheap DIY (even though you did!). 

If you have outdated kitchen cabinets, neglecting to paint them before you sell your home is a big mistake. When renovating your home for the market, the "Married to Real Estate" stars are quick to point out there are certain rooms to focus on and others to avoid. "Spend money where you're going to make the money. Kitchens and baths, we all know, help homes sell, and they add beautiful aesthetic value to a home. There are projects you can do yourself," Sherrod told HouseDigest in an exclusive interview. Luckily, you don't have to swap out your outdated cabinets — you just have to paint them!

"Let's go into the kitchen. Let's spray these kitchen cabinets instead of replacing them. We're going to save a lot of money there. Use what you have with what you have," Jackson chimes in. Even then, it's easy to sink thousands of dollars into the renovations when you don't have to. Avoiding this mistake can save you money. "​​On average, a kitchen renovation — depending on size — can range anywhere from $45 to $75,000," Sherrod adds." "But if you're just replacing hardware, and you're keeping the cabinets and you're spraying them [with paint], now maybe you spent $3,000 instead. That's a nice way to get a lot of value and keep money in your pocket."

When getting your home ready for the market, you have to think about how others will perceive it. If you decide to repaint, selecting neutral colors will entice even the most hesitant of buyers. If you go bold because your taste is bold, some people might not be able to see past it. "You have those [buyers] who are a little more sheepish, so they look at a room that's painted a color they don't like and assume it's a $10,000 fix versus just a can of paint," Sherrod told Apartment Therapy. You have to assume that most of the people who are coming to look at your home will think this way.

To avoid this happening to you, when painting for staging, go white. White paint is a blank slate that matches every design style. It will help even the most nervous of buyers look past the "you" in your home and start to imagine the space as theirs instead. There are different shades of white, some cooler and some warmer. Cooler tones work better in spaces that have a more modern feel. If you want your room to feel cozy and less like a museum, go for warmer whites. Just a little bit of yellow in the undertones can relax people and make them feel at home during house viewings.

The paint on the outside of your home has a big impact on whether people will make an offer on your house. First impressions count when trying to sell. "Often people will drive up, and if they don't like the way the home looks from the curb, they'll keep on rolling," Sherrod told Apartment Therapy. "I've experienced it as a real estate broker where I set appointments and clients pull up and they don't even want to go in because they don't like the way the house looks from the exterior."

If your house is looking a little bit dingy, you don't have to spring for repainting the entire exterior right before you move out. You don't even need to hire a professional at all. Most home goods stores like The Home Depot or Lowe's rent power washers to the public. While it is important to follow the machine's safety guide closely to avoid serious injury, most can successfully operate a power washer. The spray is hard enough to remove years of grime, soot, and mud off your exterior walls, but gentle enough to not damage the paint in the meantime. You can also use the powerwasher to spruce up the appearance of any unpainted siding or bricks you have on the exterior of your home. These being clean too will make the appearance of the painted sections look even better to those driving up.

While you don't always have to paint your home with resale value in mind, it certainly helps when it comes time to put it on the market. If you are someone who likes color, it can be tempting to paint an entire space the bold hue of your dreams. However, Egypt Sherrod thinks that in this situation, less is more — whether you are selling or not. "If you're brave, all you have to do to pull the room together is paint one wall, the one focal wall that is right behind the sofa," she told The Spruce. "Paint that the color to match your updated pillows. You can do it in a few hours to give the room an entirely new look and you didn't have to blow a bunch of money on contractors."

Bright colors can easily take over a space, making even larger rooms seem overwhelming and cramped. If your paint personality just can't stomach a neutral color, you can still make things work. By following Sherrod's advice and only painting an accent wall with something flashy that matches the room's textiles, you can still pack a punch without scaring off potential buyers.

When painting to sell your home, it's easy to get carried away and pick colors that you think might work at random. This is a mistake because painting your walls a color that, as neutral as it might seem, doesn't match the decòr you will be staging with, is still a misstep. To avoid color overwhelm, Sherrod suggests a little planning. "A great thing to do is get a paint color wheel, pick your three colors—I always follow the rule of three, even when I decorate a table," she told The Spruce. "When you pick your colors from the family you like, go with the deeper or the lighter color on the wall, and the pillows can be the other colors. You can never go wrong when you pick three from the same color wheel. They're cohesive and work together."

The color wheel helps explain the relationships between colors. Colors come in three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary colors are blue, red, and yellow. Secondary colors come from combining primary colors. Tertiary colors are mixes of primary and secondary colors. To get the perfect look to sell, choose colors from similar sides of the color wheel. Then, according to the rule of three, 60% of the room should be the main color, 30% of the room an accent color, and 10% a different color.

In the season 1 episode "Canton Get Any Better," Sherrod had a unique way of styling the wainscotting in the home. Forgetting to mimic this painting trick might harm your house's chances of sale. Homeowners usually paint a space's wainscoting white and choose a bolder color for the walls surrounding it. Sherrod recommends that to flip the script and make a room more appealing, homeowners should do the opposite. "If we're going to go light and airy with your furniture, if, at sofa level, we have a color, it offers more contrast," she said on air.

This means that as the eye scans the room, it searches for pops of color that make sense together. When selling your house, you want a room to seem larger than it is, which is why Sherrod is pushing for things to be "light and airy." If the wainscotting is white and the room is a darker color, the walls might seem to be closing in. However, if you paint the walls white and the wainscotting a brighter shade (in this case a golden oak blue), it pulls the eye just along the tops of the furniture — making the entire room seem brighter and larger.

Trends come and go — and once they go, they date your house if you still have them around. One of the biggest trends of the 2010s was shiplap. Loved by Joanna Gaines, the wooden paneling was everywhere in remodels during this time. But Sherrod insists that using this paneling turns your home into a time capsule. You should get rid of it instead of just trying to spruce it up with a fresh coat of paint. "You know when you walk into a house and it has wood paneling or it has shag carpet, there was an age for that where it was extremely popular and trendy and now it's a no-no," she told Southern Living. "Well, I believe that there are some design trends like shiplap that we will in a few decades say the same thing, too. If you're really into a trend, try to do something that's more classic that will transcend the years."

If you are thinking of installing shiplap instead of repainting, or already have some in your house and you want to update to sell, what is the alternative? Luckily, Sherrod shares the answer: Textured paints, stenciling, or even wallpaper. "It gives the dramatic appeal that people are looking for when doing these feature walls with less of a commitment," she told the magazine.

In the season 3 "Rock the Block" finale Sherrod had a warning for homeowners who are repainting their homes. When sprucing things up before listing your house, you might just paint the walls. However, during this makeover episode, she is quick to point out that there are other essential bits to cover as well, namely the vents, doors, and even trim. Instead of painting these an accent color, Sherrod thinks painting them all the same tone makes a bolder statement. Leaving them bare is a mistake as it makes things look unfinished. 

When it comes to decorating a room, it can be a bit tricky to paint the whole space in one color. Using the wrong tone for such an extreme paint job might make the room feel overpowering. That's why she was careful in selecting the perfect paint color – a lovely gray-blue shade that wasn't too bold, yet far from being boring. "[The paint color] has a blue undertone [so] it's not gray, which is typical and boring, and it's not black so you don't feel shut in; it has some color," she said in the episode. While homeowners don't have to choose this exact shade when replicating the look to place their homes on the market, they should still use the same thought process. Look for neutral shades with undertones of a bolder color for the best of both worlds.

When selecting a new wall color for your kitchen, it needs to complement your existing finishes if you don't plan to replace them. Finishes are things like drawer pulls, sink faucets, countertops, and even appliances. It is a mistake to pick a color to paint the cabinets at random, even if you think it is neutral. Colors can easily clash, or make your kitchen seem too harsh. For example, the contrast of stark white against a black countertop and drawer pulls might make your kitchen seem uninviting.

Luckily, Sherrod provides the perfect shade that will match most finishes in the second episode of "Married to Real Estate" season 2. On the show, she gushes about the new color she chose for the kitchen. "Okay. So, not gray, not taupe, not white. It's called Collingswood," she shared. "And this will give you the feeling of having a light, bright white kitchen without it being sterile white." If you are looking to take the difficulty out of selecting a color to sell your kitchen, Benjamin Moore's Collingswood is Sherrod's go-to, as it compliments all parts of the kitchen.