6 Guest Bedroom Tweaks to Create a Welcoming Guest Space

Guest bedrooms aren’t always the most welcoming rooms in the house. Usually, these rooms receive leftover pieces of furniture and unwanted decorations culled from your more polished spaces, which combine to create a hodge-podge of styles and designs that make your guests feel relegated rather than graciously received. If you are expecting guests in the near future, here are six tricks to make your guest space as hospitable as a swanky hotel.

1. Cohesive Theme

The hodge-podge of mismatched nightstands, inherited bedframe, shop-class dresser, and leftover lamps that currently makes up your guest bedroom furniture neither looks sophisticated nor feels welcoming to any house guest who stays over. The more time you spend designing and styling your guest bedroom into a beautiful space, the more appreciative your guest will be for your generosity, and the more comfortable they will feel spending time in the room.

You don’t have to ditch all your current guest bedroom furniture and purchase an expensive bedroom set to achieve a cohesive style. Instead, you can experiment with fresh paint and new hardware to adapt your current pieces to a particular theme. You can choose any theme that suits your design tastes and flows well with the rest of the house; some popular themes are:

• Country
• Modern
• Beach
• Vintage
• French

2. Better Mattress

The time for couch surfing or inflatable mattresses has long passed. Now that you have a house and a dedicated guest space, you should own a spare mattress that is at least as supportive and comfortable as your own. Guests who do not achieve deep and restorative sleep will feel groggy and cranky throughout their stay, which reflects poorly on your abilities as a gracious host.

However, mattresses are incredibly personal items of furniture that impact different bodies in different ways; for example, slight, slender guests most appreciate a plush, soft mattress that yields comfortably to their slim frames, while broader, heavier guests require their mattresses to provide firm support to prevent aches and pains from awkward sleeping positions. It is simply impossible for you to anticipate exactly who will take advantage of your guest room in the future.

Thus, you should opt for a mattress that accommodates all body shapes and sizes, like adjustable Sleep Number beds. There are cheaper options for Sleep Number beds, like the off-brand Personal Comfort sleep system, will save you money you can devote to other welcoming details in your guest room.

3. Plenty of Pillows

Nothing quite says “luxuriously comfortable” like a bed heaped in pillows. Guests have all sorts of needs when it comes to using pillows for sleep, so it is best to cover your bases by providing pillows of varying firmness and size. Plus, pillows always make a bedroom looked more styled, so you can hardly go wrong by adding more pillows to your guest bedroom furniture.

4. Appropriate Lighting

You likely have more than one source of light in your own bedroom, so you shouldn’t expect your guests to make do with a single ceiling light while they stay in theirs. All bedrooms should have at least two sources of light: ambient room light and task reading light.

The room light should be accessible from the doorway and illuminate every nook and cranny of the room; the task reading light switch should be within reach from the bed so your guest can stay comfortable when it is time for sleep. You can use ceiling lights, floor lamps, sconces, pendants, and more to achieve your desired look, but you should certainly fulfill your guest’s minimal lighting needs.

5. Floor Space

Guest bedrooms are usually the smallest in the house, which makes your planning of the space especially important. While it is crucial that you include necessary items of furniture — bed, nightstand, dresser — you want to avoid overcrowding the room and robbing your guest of adequate floor space to expand and feel comfortable. If you are working with a particularly small guest bedroom, you may want to research small bedroom design tips to help you make an appropriately welcoming room.

6. Personalized Goodies

As simple as it is for hotel staff to place a mint on your pillow after they clean your room, you likely get a pleasurable kick out of the candy every time you see it. Your house guests will also appreciate small, personal-feeling touches to their temporary sleeping space. Before they arrive, you can purchase a handful of small gifts, like fancy toiletries or a bouquet of fresh flowers, which add to the room’s design and make your guest feel especially welcome. You should try to make the goodies as unique to your guests as possible to maximize the feelings of warmth and love.