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– So you have a small house
and you have small rooms, or you're about to flip a
property and it's wicked small, and you can't add square footage. There are some ways that you can add a lot more profit to
these small properties if you just follow
these five DIY projects. They're super easy,
cost-efficient, and the best part? They give you a lot of money in the end. Who picks this for a paint color? One of the biggest
mistakes that people make when they have a small property is the paint color that
they choose for the walls. Anytime you have a dark, or
even earthy dark tone on a wall, it makes the room look very small. I'm gonna give you an example right here. In the thumbnail, I showed
you a green bedroom, and this was a very small room.

And if you could just change that color to a nice, bright, light gray, it made the room look 10 times bigger. The program that I'm using is
something by Sherwin Williams, which is I always used
to say Sherman Williams, but it's Sherwin Williams. I'll go ahead and put a
link in the description. And it will tell you exactly what colors you could use on your walls. You can pick as many as you want and you can just use this little tool. I love playing with this thing. And you can use it in as
many rooms as you want just to see what a paint
color would look like. I really had a good time with this because I could do this in any room. When you go into any house right now, everybody is looking for those
light, bright white colors, especially when you have a small property. Nothing closes in a
room like a dark color.

And as modern as some of these grays are, some of them can get a little too dark. So always weigh on the side of caution. Do lots of testing and use that website to check with different colors. I do wanna give you a word of warning. As many times as we always
say neutral color palette, I know that it has been popular
with beige and neutrals, and that is something that home
buyers do not want anymore. And another word of warning. Never paint your ceiling color
the same color as the walls. That's pretty popular here in Louisiana. Sometimes, they'll even
cut the color in half. But you're much better
off on a small property to paint them bright white 'cause it gives it a
much more taller ceiling. So do not paint the color of your ceilings the same color as your walls 'cause it makes it look
closed in and cut off, and you don't want that
feeling for any buyer that's coming through your house. You want them to make it feel big.

So investment on a can
of paint is about $45. If you went ahead and painted
the whole entire house, you're gonna be looking at a profit of about three to $5,000. So that's definitely worth
a little bit of sweat equity and it's something you
can do over the weekend, especially if you have a
teeny tiny house. (laughs) Even though this house is
in our price range, Ben, I am not sure if we're
gonna be able to do it. It's so small. Okay, now that you have
that fresh coat of paint, I'm gonna share with you my best secrets for making a tiny room look much bigger.

So before you start shoving
your furniture back in there, start decluttering all that stuff. If you have your house on the market, and let's just say the master bedroom, you wanna make that room
look as big as possible, you're gonna wanna put just
your master bed back in there and your two end tables and then possibly two small
lights, not really tall lights. You want them to be a little
bit shorter and smaller scale. And if you can live without your dresser and your hutch that's in there, that's typically in a master bedroom, it will make that room look a lot bigger. They won't even notice
you have the dresser and the tall boy gone, and it will make your
house sell a lot faster.

Also with that, when you start to hang your curtains back up, only use sheer curtains that
let the light come through, and you wanna use the curtains that go from all the way to the top,
all the way to the bottom so that way, it gives
your room a lot of height. This will make people feel
a lot more comfortable in a room that is typically pretty small. One more thing. The bedding that you choose to put on your bed should be light.

If you can't really afford
a whole new comforter set, get a duvet cover. They're very inexpensive. Amazon has tons of them. And this is when you wanna
add your pop of color. And you're gonna wanna add
accents of like whatever color is your feature color
throughout the house, whether it be red or blue. Just add that pop of color so that way, it has a
cohesiveness in the room and it doesn't look stark
white like a hospital room. I know a lot of people like that look, but let's just add a
little bit of character. Another wonderful trick
that I love to tell people when they have a super teeny tiny room is to put mirrors on the
opposite side of the windows. And the reason you wanna do that is to let the light
bounce off those mirrors. Not only does it give it the
illusion of being bigger, it also adds a lot more
light to a small room. All these tips I'm giving
you is called staging. And the better you stage
your house that's small will give you a better
return on investment, as little as 6% and as much as 10% to your overall cost of your home.

So definitely take these tips
if you have a small house and use every single one of them for every small room in your house so that way, you can get
the most profit back. Every room in this house
has the weirdest lighting. Everybody looks jaundiced. The realtor looks jaundiced. You look jaundiced, we look jaundiced. When you're dealing with tiny rooms, the one thing you wanna
do more than anything, and I know I've said it a thousand times and I'll say it a thousand more, is that you need a lot of light. Sometimes, these rooms have tiny windows and no matter how many
mirrors you put on the wall, it's not gonna break enough light in. So you're gonna need as
many lights as possible without adding a lot
of things on the floor or a lot of wires showing
throughout the house. So the best way to handle this is to put them in the ceiling. And the best way to do that is something called a puck light. A puck light is an LED light. It's about this big and
it adds a lot of light.

And it will look really great in a small home, in a small space. They're about 20 to $25, and you can add a bunch of
those throughout the house. Do it everywhere. Anywhere there is a
dark spot, add a light. The more light, the brighter
it looks, the bigger it feels, the more you're gonna get in the long run because it'll be on the
market for a lot less. The other thing about puck
lights, them being LED lights, they're considered energy-efficient, and that always looks really
good on an MLS listing that you have energy-efficient lighting throughout the house. So if you wanna do that, make sure you put that in that listing 'cause buyers love that. So you go ahead and
put as many puck lights as you can throughout the house. It costs you, let's
say, a minimum of $500.

Your return on investment is
gonna be as little as $1,000 but as much as three to $5,000. So that is a wise investment
you can do yourself. It's gonna take a little sweat equity and a little bit of time. But if you have a little
bit of electrical sense, you can do this. Make sure you follow
all the safety standards so that way, you don't get electrocuted. Just go ahead, just turn off the box.

Just turn off the whole thing and then you don't need to worry about it. Oh, dark cabinets in a
small house, who does this? Mm-mm. Bad choice. If you have a really tiny kitchen, one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of small kitchens have is that they have dark cabinetry. Instead of trying to
remove all your cabinetry and do a whole big update, which would cost you like $30,000, you can always paint them. There's definitely a lot of
different ways to do this. But the one way I definitely
don't want you to do it is to either use a roller or a paintbrush. It looks cheap. Buyers know you did it that way. All you have to do is go to a Home Depot. They'll allow you to rent a sprayer. Take off all the cabinet
doors and start spraying. It's a ton of prep work, but it will save you a lot of money. At least, there's one redeeming
quality in this house. The throw carpets look halfway decent. If you happen to have a small house and you have wood flooring,
then you're really in luck because it does make a house look bigger, but it also can make
a house feel very cold and it doesn't separate a room very well.

Throw carpets are the best way to add a lot more depth
and texture to your room without taking out the
space that it has created. A nice carpet underneath that bed will give it a nice warmness and hominess, which you want for your home buyers, and strategically placed
in areas around the house. It will give the house
a lot more definition. So don't be afraid to
throw down a throw rug. Just don't let it overtake the space. Ben, does this bathroom make
you feel claustrophobic? 'Cause I totally feel
claustrophobic in here.

So when you're dealing
with a small bathroom, this is one of those places where I'm gonna tell you
not to add a throw rug. It will add more space to
not have a throw rug there. And while people are taking showers, go ahead and put it down, but when you have home buyers
coming in, take them out. So if you're dealing with a tiny bathroom, I want you to stage it very minimal. Don't put a lot of stuff
on the countertops. Make sure you remove them. The best thing I can tell
you also for a tiny bathroom is if you have a shower tub combination, the best tip is to go ahead
and buy a shower curtain that goes from the ceiling
all the way to the floor.

It will make that room feel
so much bigger to home buyers. Make sure it's in a
light, white, bright color so that way, it adds as
much lightness in the room. If you don't have enough lights in there, again, go ahead and throw a couple of those puck lights in the ceiling and then you have a bathroom that's small that doesn't feel so small after all. Hey, that rhymed. Look, just because it was
an inexpensive DIY project, it doesn't mean it has to look cheap. You can do them yourself and make a lot more
profit in the long run.

Just make sure you do 'em right. If you want some more ideas
for other DIY projects, go ahead and click this video right here. My name is Kristina Smallhorn,
your real estate whisperer, and I tell you all these
because you matter..