How to Create a Great Guest Room

Do you find yourself hosting big events? And does someone almost always end up staying the night?

If this sounds familiar, and you have the extra space, then you why not consider making a guest room. Providing this space, and having friends visit for a weekend or a week, can be a lot of fun. It feels good to provide space for people you care about. To take your guest room to the next level, we have some tips.

The Sleeping Arrangement

The chief function of a guest room is to give an individual visitor or a couple a place to sleep. That means ensuring the room has a bed, and not just any bed. This isn’t the place to put that lumpy old mattress.

Make sure the room has a comfortable queen-sized bed, or king-sized if the room is large enough. Use high-quality bedding, meaning high thread-count sheets and pillowcases. Include several types of pillows, from soft to firm, so your guests can use what’s most comfortable for them. Include a blanket and a quilt. That way they have layers to work with depending on the weather.

Also, include a nightstand on either side of the bed and extra sheets and blankets in the closet.

A Clear Closet and Empty Dresser

Most of us don’t like living out of a suitcase, even when traveling. Make sure the guest room closet is mostly empty. It should have those extra linens your guests may need, but otherwise, there should be plenty of space for them to hang their clothes. An empty dresser is best for clothes they want to put away folded. If you have to choose one, though, choose the closet, which will have room for hung and folded clothing plus shoes and hats.

A Sitting Area

Even if your guest is highly social, they’ll want to have some time alone, and during the day a sitting area is perfect. Put a reclining chair in one corner of the room with a small table beside it.

Provide Good Lighting

Everybody likes a well-lit room, especially if they enjoy reading. You never know where your guest may like to read. Maybe it’s in bed, or maybe it’s in the reclining chair. So, put a tall lamp beside the chair or on the table. Include a desk lamp on each nightstand, and consider adding two wall lamps, one on either side at the head of the bed. If the room has overhead lights, that’s great, too, but these extra lights make reading more pleasant.

A Desk and Working Chair

Each suggestion from here on will depend on the size of the room. We hope you have a guest room that can accommodate all of it, but if not, consider what features to add depending on your guests’ needs and what’s available in other rooms.

A lot of people work from home these days or work while traveling. Also, your guest may just enjoy spending time on their laptop playing video games or working on personal projects. A desk with a comfortable desk chair will allow them to do that from the comfort of their room.

On the desk, or in a desk drawer, provide some pens and paper in case they want to write by hand.

The Entertainment

A television that your guest can watch while in bed is a pleasant touch. Sure, maybe you’d like to watch movies or your favorite shared shows together in your living room, but they may want to watch something in the middle of the night, or just enjoy a show that’s not your thing. Make sure the TV in their room has access to various streaming sites, and your local cable, if you use that.

Do you enjoy console video games? Here’s one case where the second-best thing is still pretty great. You may have the latest console in your living room, but having the last generation in the guest room, with all its games, can provide hours of entertainment for your guests.

Yes, books and magazines are entertainment, too. Provide a selection of novels, books on local attractions and history, and magazines on a shelf or a nightstand.

Some Conveniences

The room may be getting pretty full now, but again, if your guest room is really big, then you can add more. Consider adding a breakfast and snack nook or bar. This should have a coffee maker, which they can also just heat water in. Provide coffee, tea, filters, sweeteners, and cream or creamers. Of course, for cream, you’ll need to provide a mini-fridge, but that’s also a great place to put some drinks and snacks. On the counter or in a cabinet you can provide other snacks and napkins.

The Guest Bathroom

Whether the room has its own bathroom or they’ll be sharing one with you down the hall, ensure the bathroom is clean and has all they need. Provide a few types of shampoos and soaps, and clean, dry towels and washcloths. The room should have several towel racks or hangers so that each person can hang their own towel.

Final Notes and Touches

Your guest room is looking like a high-end hotel. Here are the finishing touches we suggest.

First, don’t use the guest room as storage. It should have space for your guests’ belongings, not yours.

Then, add the finishing touches. Leave them a helpful note with information like any HOA rules they’ll need to know, the Wi-Fi password, how to turn off the house alarm if they come back while you’re not home, and so on. Include a little information about local attractions, too.

Provide a set of keys so your guest can get in and out of the house and access whatever areas they need to. Put either an alarm clock or a USB charging station on a table or nightstand. Most people use their smartphones as an alarm and to check the time these days, and this will make it easy for them to do that while keeping their phone charged.

If the room is in the path of sunlight provide sheer curtains with blackout shades over them. That way, they can keep the room dark when they sleep in or if they just want more shade.

In the COVID era, people will appreciate hand sanitizer and some extra disposable masks. You can also put these on a table.

Since we advised you to not use your guest room for storage, it behooves us to help you find an affordable storage solution. On the StorageFront website, we have listings from storage facilities across the U.S. and Canada, and you will find one near you that meets your needs. To make up for the space in your guest room, we recommend renting a unit between 5’x5’ and 10’x10’.