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You only have to look at the bathrooms in high-end show homes to know how important the bathroom is in the purchasing decision of a home. New house builders have done their research and even in the smallest homes and smallest bathrooms, they will have made them appealing to our senses and our desire for a little bit of luxury in our bathing experience. Soft towels, scented soaps, shiny taps and gleaming tiles all contribute to the atmosphere of a private haven. The reality of many bathrooms may be far from this ideal with grubby grout and dated, patterned ceramic tiles but the purchase of a new home has much to do with fulfilling a dream. But, of course, before you can fulfil that dream you will probably have to sell your existing home, and, whilst an attractive bathroom will help to sell a house, similarly an unattractive bathroom will put off potential buyers of your home. So when preparing your home to show to potential buyers make sure you focus some of your time and energy on making the bathroom look as good as possible. The first area to concentrate on is clearing out the clutter to make your bathroom look as large as possible. Remove children's toys (maybe keeping just one favourite bath-time toy), and excessive bottles of shower gel and other toiletries; such items not only cause clutter but make the space very personalised and prevent potential buyers from imagining themselves living in the house. Consider buying a few luxury toiletries and fluffy new towels to display when potential buyers are viewing – after all you can take these with you when you move to help you start creating your new luxury bathroom. If you have a shower curtain then these very quickly become mouldy or discoloured so replace it with a new, clean one – maybe one that complements the colour of your new towels. And make sure that the room is always well-ventilated – damp, musty smells will quickly build up in even the cleanest bathrooms simply due to the constant damp atmosphere created in them every day. The next area to deal with is cleanliness: scrub the toilet, clean the sink and the bath, and polish the taps. If you live in a hard water area and don't have a water softener then these cleaning tasks are a real chore and will need to be done every time you have a viewing if you wish the bathroom to look its best – taps in particular really suffer from limescale build up from hard water. Next, tackle all the tiled areas, both walls and floors. The tile surfaces around the basin, bath and shower area can become dull from the build up of soap scum and mouldy or discoloured grout can add to the neglected look. There is a whole range of cleaning products aimed at returning our bathroom tiles to their original glory so chose the one best suited to you needs, not forgetting good old-fashioned bleach for cleaning the grout. If the grout between your tiles cannot be rescued by good, old-fashioned scrubbing then consider removing all the grout and replacing it or, in the worst situations, consider replacing dated ceramic tiles with shiny new porcelain tiles. An updated bathroom could just be the thing that clinches your house sale.
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