A comfortable and accommodating guest room is essential for having friends and family over. However, in many cases, the guest room ends up sitting empty for large periods of time. The reality, however, is that there is so much potential for multifunctionality in the guest room! Read on to find out how to maximize and transform your guest room into a space that is useful in your everyday life while still attending to the needs of your visitors.
Change Your Mindset
Don’t think of the guest room as a single purpose space. Sure, it’s great to have a place for guests to stay when they visit, but you have the potential to turn that space into something you can use every day. Instead of focusing on the room as a guest room, consider how you can make that space into a multi use room that can accomplish many purposes in your home. Rename it in your mind. You might, for example, want to start considering it a “bonus room” or “multipurpose room” instead of thinking of it as a guest room. After all, your guests will ultimately get a lot less use out of it than you will!
Old Room, New Role
Once you’ve freed yourself of the narrow confines of a single purpose guest room, you can start to consider how that “new” space can actually be used. You can turn your guest room into anything you can imagine! If you had an extra room in your home, what would you do with it? That old “guest room” can become anything you can imagine.
A TV/Movie Room
With a large, blank wall, you can transform your bonus room into a TV or movie room where you can enjoy your movies in style. In order to set up a home theater space, consider what you love about going to the movies. Is it the comfortable seating where you can get cozy and settle in? Or perhaps the larger than life screen that makes you feel like you’re part of the action? Use this inspiration to create the home theater of your dreams.
A Yoga Studio
Have you been practicing yoga in a tight space in your living room or bedroom, often with just barely enough space to get your mat spread out on the floor? If you’ve been struggling to find adequate room, consider transforming your guest room into the yoga studio you’ve been dreaming of. Install a large mirror, clear out some floor space, and you’ll have not only enough room to relax into a child’s pose, but also enough room for your friends to join in!
A Home Gym
Gym memberships can get pricey, and why break the bank when you can set up a home gym in your guest room? To get started, consider the types of exercises you like to do at the gym. Which machines do you use the most often? If you find yourself drifting toward the same couple of cardio machines all the time, you’ll find that it’s easy to install them in your bonus room. To create a great home gym, you may need:
- Cardio equipment. A stationary bike, treadmill, or elliptical can easily fit in your space. Many models now fold up, which means you can easily tuck them away in a closet or even under the bed if you need to transform the space back into a guest room for a visitor.
- Hand weights, kettlebells, or resistance bands. In many cases, you can get in all the weight training you need in the privacy of your home gym.
- A weight rack or multi purpose weight system. If you want to lift heavier, you may want to install a larger weight system. Many of them fold up or use just a few square feet for all the weight lifting you’ve been doing at the gym!
- An exercise mat to help keep you off the floor.
- A stability ball for some of your favorite core exercises.
Once you’ve stocked your home gym, you’re ready to go! Create an exercise plan and stick with it. Often, it’s much easier to get in the great shape you’ve always dreamed of when everything you need is right there in your home gym.
Your Sewing or Craft Room
When you have a hobby like sewing or crafting, it doesn’t take long for those items to start to take over. You may have stacks of fabric or boxes of yarn in your closet, so many that you may not always even know what you have on hand. You may have organizers full of crafting supplies: glitter, pretty paper, glue, and more. Many items, including sewing machines and cutting machines, take up a great deal of space. They also take a long time to haul out and set up time that you could be spending crafting!
Transforming your former guest room into a sewing or craft room is a great way to make the most out of that space. With some long tables set up and a few shifts in lighting, you can create a great room where you can get away to work on your favorite crafting projects. Better yet, you can leave your favorite machines and materials set up whether you’re mid-project or not, which means that you won’t have to waste any more time before you jump into your favorite creative pursuit. Having a dedicated crafting room may also mean that you can more easily organize your crafting supplies, which means no more buying three of the same color of yarn because you couldn’t find it in the bottom of the box.
A Teen Hangout Room
If you have teens living at home, you know how quickly they can take over a space. You want your teens to feel comfortable having guests over, but you may also want to use your living room every once in a while. Turning that rarely used guest room into a teen room can allow your teens to hang out with friends at home in their own space without sacrificing your TV time. Consider adding a few games, including air hockey or a mini arcade game, or installing a TV that can be hooked up to your gaming systems. Add comfortable furniture and a few accents, and you’ll have a gorgeous room that is perfect for teens to spend time in when they’re hanging out at your house.
A Home Office Space
These days, more people than ever are working from home. Whether you’re a full time remote worker or you work from home a couple of days a week, you need a dedicated space where you can get away from the hustle and bustle of the house and focus on work and shut the door on work when the day comes to an end and you’re ready to get back to the rest of your life. A corner desk can provide you with plenty of space to spread out across your desk, including room for multiple monitors and space so that you can still write on your desk. Add a comfortable desk chair, add a modern bookshelf, and you’ll have a professional looking office space that will allow you to make the most of your time at home.
Using a guest room as home office space is nothing new. However, when you start to think of that bonus room as a multifunctional space, you’ll find that it’s easier to make room for your work, especially if you choose sleeping options for your guests that aren’t taking up the entire floor.
Remember Your Guests
While you want to take full advantage of your bonus room space, after all, you will be using that space much more frequently than any visitor to your home! You do want to make sure that you remember your guests as you prepare your space. There are several options that will allow you to create a great space for your visitors to sleep without necessarily using the traditional boxy beds that take up most of the floor space in a room.
Sofa Sleepers
Most of the time, a sofa sleeper functions as comfortable seating in whatever room you have chosen. When it folds out, however, it becomes a bed for your guests. You can find sleeper sofas in a variety of sizes, including everything from twin size to king size, which means that you will have plenty of room for anyone who wants to visit without compromising on space in your guest room the rest of the time.
Murphy Beds
A Murphy bed is one of the most practical, space saving options available for making the most of your bonus room. When it’s not in use, a Murphy bed folds up on the wall. When you want to use it for your guests, you can simply pull it down on the hinges that run along one side. If you intend to use a Murphy bed, you’ll need to make sure that you have adequate space in the room to pull it down, including plenty of storage that will allow you to tuck away the items in the room that aren’t in use when you have guests. This is where fold up treadmills and ellipticals in your home gym can really come in handy, since they can go from being bulky items that take up a lot of your floor space to slipping under the bed when it’s folded down.
Daybeds with Trundle Options
A daybed like the Heartland Decorative Daybed tucks neatly against the wall and doesn’t take up much space. With a trundle beneath, you can provide yourself with additional storage or a slide out bed that is perfect for guests with children. A daybed is also a beautiful way to add some seating in your room.
Futons
A futon is a great way to add both sleeping space and seating in your bonus room. When it’s folded up, it’s simply a sofa or seating space. When you fold it out, on the other hand, it can become a full bed for your guests. Many futon mattresses are more comfortable than ever, making them the ideal option for entertaining guests who will be staying with you for a few nights.
Twin Beds
If you want to provide your guests with a traditional sleeping option, consider offering two twin beds in the room. In their normal configuration, you can place them in an L shape, which means that they’ll just take up one corner of the room, rather than the bulk of the space in the middle of the floor. With a little effort, you can move those twin beds together, creating a full size setup that will allow partners to sleep together or create more room for adult sleepers. Using two twin beds may also make it easier to accommodate guests when you have more than one person staying overnight.
Design a Versatile Guest Room at Star Furniture
Whether you’ve just moved into a new home and it has more space than you needed previously or you’ve been living in your home for a while and want to make more out of your bonus room, a few changes in design and a little creativity can help you make the most of every inch of that space. Take the time to dream about what you really want that space to be! In many cases, with some creative furniture wrangling, you can make that bonus room into a multipurpose space that can accommodate your visitors, your hobbies, and your work, all without needing to add on to your home.
For more home design ideas, read our blog about guest room upgrades that will wow your visitors.