Phone: 07919 448240
Phone: 07919 448240
I’ve always said that the best way to see if your guest room is actually a welcoming place for your nearest and dearest, is to use it yourself. If you have never slept in your guest room, how do you know if the temperature is right, if the lighting is good, whether it is a comfortable place to be and whether there are any useful items that are missing? While I still feel this is a good idea, I have to say that I now look at this exercise very differently. I think if you make your guest room really, really nice, you may just be tempted to spend the odd night or two, possibly a long weekend, in your guest quarters. After all, sometimes a change really can be that good rest so many of us are longing for.
If you are the homeowner, the chances are that you are in the biggest bedroom (the main bedroom, the principal bedroom, the master bedroom if you must) and if any of your bedrooms have an en-suite bathroom, it’s likely that it is this one. The trick is not to get hung up on what your guest room doesn’t have but look at what it has to offer, or what it could offer. Being different, feeling different, is the key. It might naturally have a different view, a different shape, it might be a quieter room in the house, or a warmer one. If there really isn’t anything obvious, try to think about what could be added. If it’s an older house and has a chimney breast, could you add a fireplace? If there is space, could you add a lovely bookcase and a reading chair. If it is small without much additional space to play with, I would think about using a bolder wall colour, or wallpaper, and contemplate adding a feature bed such as a four poster or a big headboard. Whatever you do, don’t compromise on the bed, either the size or the comfort factor. If the room is tiny, put in the biggest bed you can and use really small bedside tables rather than an undersized bed which will never tempt you to leave the comfort of your own bed to take an overnight stay along the corridor.
Good lighting is as vital in bedrooms as everywhere else and the good news is that it is often not that complicated but it does need to be considered. You will need soft bedside lighting and even though many of us get the words we read before lights out from our devices, you still need to be able to see enough without feeling over lit or automatically waking a sleeping partner. To achieve this, you might want a brighter bedside lamp and also a gentle, focused reading lamp. It is also attractive to have other lamps in the room if possible and you might need some additional lighting just so that on the occasions you need to brightly lit room (cleaning or packing for example), you have that option. Central pendant lights generally give really poor light around a room and if you are using one in a bedroom, it is better to think of it as a decorative item (such as a chandelier or a beautiful shade) rather than using it as an everyday light source.
As ever, accessories are your friend and items in your guest room should be thought about carefully as they can be used to make the room not only feel different to the room that you use regularly but also rather special. Make sure that the pictures you hang in the room are ones you really like and invest in high quality bedlinen, a bed throw and cushions for the bed. Also some practical things like good hand cream, an attractive water jug and glasses, a selection of readable books and a beautiful vase that can take a handful of flowers or vegetation from the garden (or a really good faux bunch if you know this won’t actually happen) will be welcomed both by guests and by you when you use the room. On a practical note, see if there is somewhere that you can provide a space to put an overnight bag, or just to pile up clothes (rather than on the floor) and similarly a few hooks on the back of the door or elsewhere, with some good quality hangers, are always welcome.
If you live in a bigger house, you might find yourself in the enviable position of having more than one guest room and therefore I would strongly advise that you keep repeating the approach of finding the advantage of the room and playing to that strength. For example, if the room is small, you might find that it can be made to be feel incredibly cosy and indeed may be the easiest to properly heat and therefore the warmest room in the house during a cold snap. If you decorate your guest rooms beautifully and crucially differently to each other, they will be a pleasure to use, and I would say that you are getting the decoration of the room right when you want to use it as much as you want to be in your own room.
There is often the thorny issue of changing a child’s bedroom once they have left home. You hopefully want to encourage them to come back and for them to be comfortable in your home when they do. However, their old rooms shouldn’t be kept as a shrine to their childhood, or indeed act as a free storage locker for the stuff they can’t be bothered to sort out or take to their own abode. I hope that if you redecorate the room and make it inviting for them to use that the drama of changing a space won’t be insurmountable, and in doing so you will reclaim a room for you and your other guests to use as well as your offspring.
So take a look at your spare room – view it not as a lesser space than the room you have selected as your own, but as an opportunity to create your own destination bedroom that you would like to book into when you deserve a treat and you want a change. Your guests will thank you, assuming of course that you can bear to move out of the room when they come to visit.
© Angel + Blume
