We’ve been kicking around the idea of making this room into a guest bedroom for a while now, but we’re having a hard time committing to the idea.
In the past three years, we’ve only had guests stay over twice! It seems so nice, though, to be able to invite people to visit and not force them to sleep on the sofa or on an air mattress. Maybe we don’t have guests because we don’t have a place to put them! (Or maybe it’s just that nobody likes us.) I do know that I would be far more likely to invite friends and family to visit knowing that there’s a whole room awaiting them.
Questions:
→ Do you have a guest bedroom?
→ How much use does it get?
→ What size bed do you have in your guest bedroom?
101 Comments
1. No, as I only have a one bedroom apartment. Sure wish I did though.
2. Well, see above sadly.
3. I would have a queen-sized bed, as I think that’s the minimum size for any tall people, and a number of my family members are tall.
We’ve been in our current house for about seven months now, and have had overnight guests at least once a month. In addition to a dedicated guest bedroom, we keep a daybed in our office in case we have more than one overnight visitor.
Our guest bedroom has a full-size bed in it — it was the largest bed that would fit in our previous home’s guest bedroom — but we’re planning to bump it up to a queen-size. Thankfully, our Dwell duvet is a f/q so it can stay!
we do finally have a guest bedroom and while it isn’t used very much and i could find a more productive use for it, it is soooo great to finally not have to say “here’s the couch!” oh, and a double because that’s what we had and also what fits. it works.
1. Not at the moment although I used to.
2. I found that as soon as you call a room a ‘guest room’ it seems to send something out into the universe and all of a sudden, guests appear. Sometimes this is a great thing and sometimes not so great!
3. Queen sized bed seems to fit the bill.
Oh and if you’re wanting guests… I’ll stay 🙂
I’m no help at all, but where did you get your yellow blanket/duvet cover from? I’m kind of in love with it. Thanks.
Yes and it gets quite a bit of use. Mother in law stays at least one weekend a month and we quite often have out of towners use it here and there. It has a queen size bed in it which seems to work fine. I like having it just in case!
1. Yes.
2. Since we set it up we’ve had WAY more guests, and it’s great.
3. It has a Queen sized bed in it, that way it’s big enough for two people to sleep comfortably, and long enough for my ridiculously tall Dutch relatives.
we have one, it gets lots of use- I’d say about once a month. we have a full size bed so that we can have couples stay with us even though it’s pretty large for the room.
1. Yes, actually two of them, but we’ll be down to just one when the baby arrives in july and older daughter moves into one of them.
2. at least once a month, and there have been times both guestrooms, plus the futon in the family room have all been in use! especially nice for having semi-far flung friends over for parties… ya know those folks that live close enough to easily drive, but too far to drive home at 2am.
3. all the guest beds are double beds and they work fine, even for my 6’2″ brother in law. I say get the same size as your own bed, that way you’ll have some interchangeable linens, plus you won’t issues keeping track of the different sizes (which can be very difficult between queen and a double/full).
1. We have a guest room, although the most frequent “guests” are the insane amount of fabric I store in it as a quilter.
2. It gets used a couple of times a year by out-of-town guests, so that is definitely worthwhile. Used more frequently as a place for our granddaughter to spend the night, which is the best.
3. We have a queen-sized bed (with toddler safety-sides).They go up and down depending on need–not a great-looking decorating feature. However,SHE sure is cute so the room looks extra great when she is sleeping in it.
We have a good quality futon in my “office” so when we have guests I get to relinquish my little space. It is a queen when it is pulled out and fairly comfy, we slept on it when we were sealing the tile in the master bath and it reeked of toxic fumes. It is a useful space with or without guests so I don’t mind it being the guest bedroom if it means having people more often. Also our couch isn’t as good to sleep on as the old one was so if we want to have overnight guests it is in our interests to keep the comfy futon available. It only occurs every couple of months though.
We do have a guest bedroom, it has a double bed in it. It doesn’t get a heap of use, but is really handy when we do have out of town guests (about 4 or 5 times a year). Even more useful is when my mother comes over to babysit and we know we’ll be home late – she can just go to bed and spend the night here, rather than waiting around and then driving home at all hours.
I wouldn’t be without a guest room, it’s there when you need it and you always feel comfortable inviting people to stay. It’s also good when one of you is sick and doesn’t want to spread germs around – one of you can sleep in the spare room!
All of this sounds so lovely…except I just signed a lease on a studio here in San Francisco!
On an unrelated note, would really appreciate any tips for designing small spaces.
Thanks!
1. Shockingly, yes.
2. ALL THE TIME. I live in Brooklyn, but am from the west coast. As such, I am many of my friends closest NYC person. Add to this that my fiance is Australian and aussies are known travelers we have almost too many guests to handle. We also occasionally sublet the room to (mainly foreign) tourists on a weekly basis if we’re feeling broke or need some extra money for a big piece of furniture or something.
3. Full. the room is tiny. just less than 6 feet wide and about 10 feet long. A full is the only 2-person bed that will fit. And that’s ALL that will fit.
But hey! it’s got a window, a door, and a closet. for Williamsburg one stop from Manhattan, that ain’t bad.
I have only one “spare room” which doubles as a craft room /guest room. I have a single bed (sorry, just one person) disguised as a sofa/daybed. There’s no cupboard for their hanging clothes but I guess I would make room as I have a walk in closet (if you could say that of the smallest room in my flat with elfa shelves).
But 1,5 years now and no guests…
– We have an extra room like you do, but definitely plan to make into a guest bedroom. Unless we end up having a second child and then my husband’s office will have to be dual purpose. I am not sure why but I think that a house (if at all possible) should have a guest bedroom.
– I am hoping that it would get a lot of use and I am sure that yours would too. Who wouldn’t want to stay there?
– I have thought about the size thing a lot and am currently thinking a full. Not too small for two and not too big for one.
We live in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and slowly but surely all our rooms become multi-functional.
There’s only a small two-personbed left in my office, but for the rest we use fold-out mattresses which we store in the big wardrobe in the morning.
Most of our visitors prefer to sleep in the living room. During the night doors and windows are open with mosquito screens and especially the Bangkokians enjoy the fresh air that comes from the hills in the nighttime.
Your lovely guestroom would be impossible here: it would be a waste for doing great things there during the day (and the night).
But hey, we know the feeling you describe: come and stay if you like. Where do you want to stretch your mattresses?
We are going to sacrifice our guestroom, make it into a kid’s room. It has been getting a lot of use though, since one of my brothers moved to another city he and his girlfriend visits their friends (and family) here guite often and when they do they stay with us, The bed is big enough for two. This summer my youngest brother lived in that room for 8 weeks since he had a job here but no apartment after he had been studying in another city. I will miss our guestroom, but our couch is quite comfortable and I hope my brothers will come to visit as often as before anyway.
1) Will have one in our next apartment.
2) Hopefully a lot of use! My parents retired to sunny South Carolina so now they’ll have somewhere to stay when they visit. I definitely think that if you have the room to stick a bed it is nice to not have to stay on an air mattress 🙂 Then I’m totally putting either my craft table or a desk in there to make it multi-functional.
3) Probably a double – maybe a queen.
I love that comforter you have in that picture!
Fun colors!
We have a guest bedroom that NEVER gets used. I’m really rethinking about having on in our next house. We do have a full size bed in there for when people do want to stay over, but in the last two years it’s been used maybe 5 times.
No. I live in NYC, and we are not ridiculously wealthy (unfortunately). I would love to have one.
I would say the smallest bed size should be a queen, although if a queen can’t fit, I would seriously prefer a trundle twin bed to a smaller size bed, like a full. My husband is really tall, though, and we both like space when we sleep.
1. Currently yes
2. Not much as it’s small
3. Right now, a twin, hence the answer to #2.
1. In the new house, definitely!
2. Hopefully a lot more if it’s bigger, and in a better location.
3. Queen size. Bed is currently in storage.
Here’s the thing, houseguests are a little overrated. It’s fun on Friday night but by Sunday everyone needs their space. If you can give up the space go for it. Otherwise I think you should use the room for something more useful. My sister turned a bedroom in her house into a huge closet!
We have a spare room that we keep saying will be the guest room (until it becomes a baby’s room anyway), but we haven’t bothered to set up a bed in it yet. It will have a full size bed once we put it in there. I don’t believe in buying a bed just for the guest room to be used only a few times a year. It’ll get my old bed. I only have guests a few times a year since my family lives nearby and Long Island isn’t exactly the kind of place that people want to travel to very often.
We have an office with a single bed in it. In 3 years it has only been used once, but then for 3 weeks.
I guess you just have to weigh the pros and cons and also if you will really use it. Unless you’ve really missed having one so far, I would use the space for something else.
Do you have a guest bedroom?
–Yes. Although it is often the “where things go to die” room.
How much use does it get?
–We live in Florida, so we get semi-frequent guests (once every few months).
What size bed do you have in your guest bedroom?
–Queen. Our old bed once we upgraded to a king bed. Which, btw, rocks.
1. we do have a guestroom
2. it gets used once a month (or thereabouts)
3. we have a double, but it could fit a queen. at the time we went with a double for cost reasons….but someday i’d like to upgrade to a queen.
here’s the thing…i love having the extra room. guests on the couch can be a little obtrusive (for the homeowner) and uncomfortable (for the guest). HOWEVER… it kills me to see the room go unused the rest of the 350 days of the year.
i’m big into using every ounce of space (i have a family of three and with a modest sized house). so i have been trying to figure out a dual use for my guestroom…
i say, if you have the luxury of the space…go for it.
1. We have two spare rooms.
2. While they are both set up as bedrooms, we use them primarily to get dressed in or to store our clothes. We didn’t move into our “Master” bedroom until more than a year after we moved in so we never got around to moving the rest of our stuff into the bedroom we sleep in now.
3. One is small enough for a twin bed, which might be replaced by a crib one day. The other has a queen sized bed.
I’m also curious about your duvet. It’s lovely!
Also, what is that little thing below the chair?
1. We have a guest room (we’re sleeping in it right now until our bedroom is ready). Actually we have two guest rooms, but that is temporary.
2. My father was staying with us for three weeks (from Switzerland), and my sister visited for 10 days–they each had their own room. Now we have guests sleeping over 3-4X/month. We sometimes have 3-4 guests staying at a time (an air mattress gets added to the mix).
3. The guest bed is full/double…whatever that size is. And we have a single mattress that we can put down in our office/library, if necessary.
When we lived in Brooklyn, and before kids, we had a guest bedroom/office with a single mattress.
I have two guest rooms, one with it’s own bathroom. They get used a few times a year, usually for friends who I have been “celebrating” with and who need a night’s rest before driving home. Both rooms have queen size beds. They don’t get a ton of use, but otherwise I’m not sure what I would do with them, and it is nice seeing furnished rooms rather than more places for storage (even though both double as extra places for storage, they just don’t look like they do).
We do, we use it every few weeks, it has a queen bed. I also love the spare room when either of us has a cold/hacking cough, the other can still get a decent night’s sleep!
I don’t have a guest bedroom unfortunately. I force them to sleep on the couch. But I’ve gotta say that your bedspread is so sweet! That’d be welcoming to any guest!
We had a temporary guest bedroom when my roommate moved to the downstairs apartment and his room was in transition (it’s now a TV room with a door, whew!). We had a twin bed in there and it was really nice to have a bed to offer guests. I didn’t realize it until my boyfriend’s brother-in-law came to town for a night.
I love using guest bedrooms when I visit friends and family. Bonus if there’s a dresser and some nice lotion, soaps, and a candle.
1 guest bedroom, queen sized bed, tons of use. We have guests all the time, mostly our respective sets of parents.
Ours is a multi-purpose room in our downstairs area (I hesitate to call it a basement because it’s not fully underground and had windows). We bought a super comfortable futon from Ikea so it’s an additional living space for us then converts into a great area for guests when we have them. I put the futon up on bed risers and angle it into the room and viola, guest bedroom.
We use our second bedroom as a TV room, sacrificing our backs to keep a futon instead of getting a couch. I’d say we have someone crash there once a month, on average? From late Feb. to late March we will have three sets, though. I wish we could have a real bed in there but at least there is a private room for them. (It will be a wrench to give up that room when we have a baby; not sure how we’ll put the TV in the living room, and I think we’ll get rid of the futon at that point and just have an aerobed.)
If you’ve got the room, go for it! It’s a great feeling to say “Come stay with us! We’ve got a room all ready for you!”
Hey Anna,
We have a guest room, which also serves as my dressing room (i.e., where my closet is). When guests stay, I just pull some clothes out for a few days and put them in the my bedroom. We have guests stay quite often, it’s part of the reason we looked for a two bedroom house – most of our family is on the west coast, so it’s nice to have a spot for them to stay. I opted not to get a bed but a futon instead. I know, it’s horrible to even say the word futon. I don’t love that it’s a futon but I love the space it creates when there isn’t anyone staying. How to make the futon attractive I haven’t sorted out yet, still working on having a kitchen. Priorities!
we bought a 4 bedroom house – it’s just my husband and me so we are planning on making one of the rooms a guest bedroom. a friend is giving us a queen bed, so all we need to buy is a new mattress. we have friends and family visit us about once a month so i’m looking forward to having a place to put guests! right now they sleep on couches and airbeds, it’ll be nice to be able to give them their own space.
When baby #2 comes in July, we will sadly be down to zero guest rooms and all guests will have to sleep either in the living room on the sofa bed or drag a futon mattress to the sunroom. We have a full-sized futon in our one remaining guest room, which will be folded up into its sofa position soon. The loss of private guest space is unfortunate as none of our family live close enough for day visits and they and we would like them to spend some time with the babies.
1. Yes, and we also have a desk in the space. The main purpose of the room is a guest room, but having a desk in there with minimal clutter on it makes the space multifunctional. Eventually I want to tech geek out the office space a little when I have more money. 🙂
2. It rarely gets used, but not sure what else we’d use the space for if it weren’t a guest bedroom/office. I’d say probably 7-10 nights per annum, but for those nights it is indespensible. It is also seems more inviting to tell people you have a guest bedroom as opposed to saying you will make room for them.
3. Queen. We have the same size bed in the master bedroom and buy the same sheet sets for both rooms. This makes laundry easier, and is one less pillow case to keep track of since all the sets match. The duvets are different to allow each room to have its own character.
we don’t right now, but we need one so the MIL can come stay. we’ve been truly inconsiderate and let DH’s brother house her for the past four years! i’d like to have a queen, but I don’t think one will fit in our spare room because the layout with doors and baseboard heating is funky. After the kitchen, it is my next project!
1. Not yet but we will as soon as we get a house! I can’t wait for that, for now our guests usually sleep on our couch and I hate it. I hate knowing that I can’t go in my kitchen to make coffee without waking them up, etc. And it’s just not as comfortable for them to have to sleep in a living room on a couch, I’m sure!
2. I’d say it would get used about once every 2 months.
3. I think we’ll get a queen for the room. We hate our bed because it’s too firm, and we’ve thought about getting a new one (this one is only 3 years old) and putting the one we have now in the guest room, but I would feel bad about it, so we’ll see.
I will have a guest room/ office when we finish remodeling. I live far away from my family and when friends/family visit they have to choose between an airbed in the living room or a hotel, so I look forward to providing something a little nicer. Right now I’m planning a queen bed because I already have a mattress, but ideally I’d like to have a futon or daybed to make more space for the office. The airbed is only pulled out about 3-4 times a year, so I want to be able to use the room the rest of the time.
I have a one bedroom condo in Toronto, so obviously I have no guest room. I have had guests stay, however, by sleeping on an air mattress myself and allowing my guests to sleep on the “real” bed. I have made my bedroom “hotel” quality just for this reason. I bought the same size air mattress as my bed (queen) so that I wouldn’t have to buy & store extra sheets in a different size.
I have posted photos of the bedroom on my blog:
http://cherishtoronto.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-far-so-good.html
I know what you mean. My boyfriend and I live in a 1 bedroom apartment, and he’s very proud of this accomplishment that he constantly mentions it to his parents. Unfortunately, we won’t have a place for them to sleep if they do come here and I doubt all three of them wants to share space on our couch.
I now have two, only because our sons have moved out. One has a double bed in and the other two singles, but we are in the throes of moving (fingers crossed)…and our new home has a larger main bedroom, and a smaller second room…still large enough for a double though.
People always like to stay. We live in the country and family live in the city, so they come for a bit of peace and fresh air.
Good luck with your decisions. 🙂
We have a queen sized sofa bed from Rowe Furniture. It’s a little more $$ than a traditional sofa bed, but the blow-up mattress in it makes all the difference. I haven’t slept on it myself but our handful of guests have raved about it so far. One even stayed for a week and a half, which is about a week longer than I expected 🙂
1. Yes, but currently it’s also my husband’s office (not ideal)
2. We’ve only had a guest room since September (before that we had a 1 br apt), and it’s been used three times.
3. Full size, but I think a queen is better unless all your guests are singletons!
I have a guest room, but it doubles as my craft room. When I first bought my house a year ago, it was soley for guests, but I found that I only needed it about twice a year. I sold the futon I had in there and replaced it with a large table. Now when guests come, I put down a queen sized air mattress. The rest of the year, I sew and craft in there.
1. No (one bedroom apt!). However, my sofa is a pull-out (from Pier 1)
2. I have a lot of friends who moved out of state for grad school, so they’ve used it occasionally. My sister stays with me a few days when she visits about twice a year (more central than our parents place). People stay over if we’ve been drinking and they shouldn’t drive (few times a year).
3. It’s a full-size, same as my bed so I don’t have to buy different sheets.
we do. Its been used exactly once in the last two years. Queen bed which is too big for the room honestly, but we already had it. I also have a desk in there that I use occasionally so the room isn’t totally neglected.
We have a guest bedroom and overnight guests about once a month. We have a full size bed in there. It is so nice to be able to give them a space of their own.
You should DO it!
1. Yes, we have a dedicated room (but it also has my piano in it, so it’s sort of multi-functional). We also have a daybed in our office.
2. We have guests all the time – both family and friends. I would say that our guest room gets used at least 6-8 times a year (for at least 2 nights at a time). And lots of times we have larger groups staying with us (our family over the holiday or friends with kids), so both the guest bedroom and the daybed get used at the same time. Plus, we entertain a lot, and I sometimes have to “store” my friends for the rest of the night.
3. We have a full-size right now, which seems to work okay, but I would like to upgrade to a queen eventually.
my partner & i have a guest bedroom which we use quite often. we like to entertain & that usually involves a lot of cocktails, so our guest who tend to have one too many for their body weight will end up staying at our place so that they are not putting themselves & others in danger.
also, we’re early risers, so when we do have guestwe don’t have to tip toe around someone sleeping on the couch.
One more thing, if the significant other is in the doghouse, he has his own bedroom! 🙂
Queen size is the way to go!
Crazy about you & your thoughts!!
We don’t have a dedicated guest room, but we have an office-that-can-double-as-guest-room. It has a dwr Twilight sofa-bed. We use the office daily, but the bed only gets used once or twice a year. We don’t want to make it TOO comfortable, or my mother-in-law might get the idea to move in…
My guest bedroom is used frequently. My elderly mother lives with me, so family come and visit whenever they can.
I have a queen sized bed in there, along with an assortment of air mattresses that can be blown up as needed for the youngsters.
We do not have a guest room, but I sure wish that we did. For us, though, it’s just not worth sacrificing the space for something that isn’t needed often.
Our guests stay on a comfortable, full-size fold-out IKEA in our spacious living room. It makes things a bit awkward since the living room is the only room other than our kitchen where we’re most prone to entertain. It’s usually fine for one-night stays, but anything longer feels a bit odd for both host and guest. There’s the question of whether or not you transfer the bed to sofa during the day or just leave things as a guest room (bed and all) during their entire stay. There are doors to block off the room, but still …
We have guests maybe 10 nights a year, but we have had the rare house guest stay as long as a week or two at a time in the past.
We have a twoish bedroom house. The back two bedrooms are really one room, because there is a wide doorway between the two rooms. The doorway is big enough for French doors, but we don’t have any installed. We use the back part as an office, and the front part as our bedroom. The second bedroom is at the front of the house, and we do use it as a dedicated guest room with a full size bed. We have guests anywhere from 2-4 times per year. We just got a new mattress, and it was MUCH appreciated by by parents.
One thing about a guest room: It’s nice to have a few empty drawers for them, or at the very least, ample flat surfaces where they can spread their things out and make themselves comfortable. The more comforatble your guests are, the more they’ll want to come back!
Yes, we have a guest bedroom that also doubles as a craft and sewing room.
We have a lot of family within a 5 hour radius, so our house tends to be the meeting place. I would say we host between 12-15 times per year, which isn’t a TON.
We purchased a WONDERFUL innerspring queen sized futon mattress and VERY simple and minimal frame. Its absolutely lovely and extremely comfortable. It fits queen sheets as well.
1)Yes
2) Tristram and Sally are the only ones to ever use it as a place to sleep.
3)Full ( staged with a still life-esque bedscape that is just there to support the overall modern, minimalist esthetic, that is when the pillows haven’t been pushed onto the floor by the aforementioned pups!)
1. Yes we do have one. Something I never thought I would have. Why buy/rent more real estate than you need? And we have another extra room for an office.
2. Guests use it every few months but it gets used way more than that: if one of us is sick; if one of us can’t sleep it is a warm spot to go and read, etc.; sometimes one of us goes in to grab a nap instead of napping on the sofa or the master bedroom. When we talk about moving and downsizing we always say no need for an office and a guest room but there is something about having that room as a restful oasis if we can afford it.
3. The guest room has a queen bed,the office has a day bed.
We have 3 bedrooms in the house (we live in a narrow 1890s rowhouse). Both of the extra bedrooms serve double duty… One bedroom is a study/studio with case study couch (that can serve as a bed when guests stay over). The other extra bedroom, which has a double bed, serves as a dressing room and overflow storage space.
I think ideally, a queen size bed would be optimal as a guest room bed, if you can/want to do it. It’s a lot of bed, plus with a queen size bed, unless the room is relatively large, it most likely will only be able to serve single duty (as guest bedroom only). Double/full size bed could be loaded with pillows to serve as a daybed/loungey extra wide couch.
Our house has been under gut-renovation for a few years, but even during heavy construction, we’ve had guests at least once a year. Now that things are wrapping up, I’m getting the feeling that we’ll have out-of-town guests/family visiting more frequently…
We do have a guest room that functions as my studio for the most part since we only have guests a couple times a year. We have a queen in there, but I’m regretting it because I don’t know where it’ll go when it eventually becomes the nursery. Should’ve gone with a futon… It was a hurried purchase because my sister informed me (apparently sisters don’t need invites?) she was visiting from Australia for TWO months so I wanted something comfy for her.
we don’t have a guest room – there’s not enough space for it. 😉
We have a guest room, which doubles as my office/craft room. We have guests fairly frequently – maybe one or two weekends a month (DC is a tourism hotspot!). We invested in a comfy full-sized bed which we have against the wall like a day bed (with lots of colorful pillows!). We also slid a twin mattress underneath the bed and hidden by the bedskirt for those times when our houseguests bring a little kiddo or if we need a third spare bed to set up in the basement. It just feels so good to be able to give our guests a place of their own…and that isn’t wasted space since it’s my office as well!
Although your guest bed might not get a ton of use, you will be glad you have it when you DO have houseguests! Have you looked into a pop-up trundle daybed?
P.S. – I LOVE your blog and am so inspired by your beautiful renovation! Y’all have made the place GORGEOUS.
We have one extra room that is used daily as a yoga space.
When guests come it is maybe 3 times a year, max, usually en route to the airport.
They get a very comfortable and light fold up double sized futon mattress and then they get the experience of sleeping in what is a very clean (cat free) and airy space. No complaints yet!
1. Yes
2. We live across the country from family so it gets used infrequently but for a week or more at a time.
3. Queen Bed. We used to have a full and that worked fine as well. We upgraded our bed to a king and moved the queen to the guest room.
We felt we needed a guest room for when family comes to stay but we didn’t want to give up a whole room to it. Our solution… The bed is in the back half of the room with two comfy chairs in front of it facing a large TV that is in what was closet. We took the sliding doors off the closet, painted it out black and put maroon velvet curtains around the TV. The room is painted the same color and it gives the whole room an understated “theater” feel. By using the closet we got the extra 24 inches we needed in our 10×12 room.
Yes, I have three guest rooms, two with king beds, and one with a queen bed. I use them quite a bit…at least two times a month probably, and on several occasions each year, all three are filled up.
Holy mackerel! I had no idea guest bedrooms were such a hot topic – and that so many people have them! I grew up in small houses and lived in NYC for so long that the idea of having a whole extra room (well, 3 extra rooms…) is totally foreign to me. It’s weird to have all of this space!
I really appreciate all of this feedback, everyone. THANK YOU! Here’s what I’ve learned:
1. If we have the space (and we definitely do!), it’s worth it.
2. A twin bed isn’t going to cut it. Full size will have to suffice, though. (We just upgraded to a queen bed ourselves!!)
To answer a couple of questions…
The duvet cover is from Dwell, but it’s a few years old and has since been discontinued.
The thing under the chair is a white noise machine, and I LOVE IT. 🙂
1. Yes
2. The holidays and summer are busy with guests. Over this past holiday, I had people from dec19th thru jan 16th. Not the same people either…that was a little too much for me. I felt a little like a B&B. But great fun to see everyone.
3. Queen
Final thought: Even with the economy I think people would still like to get away and giving them a place to stay saves $$$.
We currently have an office/guest room combo in our rented apartment which has a futon in it – it’s fine and all but waking up next to a 3ft stack of my other half’s techie books isn’t exactly relaxing! We’re bidding on a 3BR house this week and I’m already fantasising about the extra space, and the capacity to have more people over more often (it’s once every couple of months at the moment).
I have a guest room. It has a Queen bed in it. It used to be our bed before we upgraded to a King so it’s extremely comfortable. Many guests have said so!
It’s nice to have a room put aside, already done up, ready for anyone to come stay, even at a momen’t notice.
Ideally, it could be a dual purpose room where there is space to do something else with it when not being slept in but our room is quite small so it’s mostly taken up with bed.
Our’s gets used pretty regularly as we live a couple of hours away from friends and family.
I keep my spare room made up almost all the time and the door shut so the kitty can’t get in. Just in case I have cat-allergy guests. I only clean the room before and after guests so I can ignore it the rest of the time.
We have a guest room and fortunately it’s big enough to handle two twin beds. It is used non-stop since we live in Virginia, 5 miles outside of D.C. Lots more friends/relatives are coming by…could it be the new president and an overall happier nation’s capital? In fact, we’re gearing up for the Cherry Blossom Festival coming shortly!
Our solution, in our 2-bedroom, 1100-SF condo, is to use put our TV and hand-me-down sleeper sofa in the 2nd bedroom. It gets our TV out of the living room and provides a separate sleeping space for guests, without giving up too much space. (And depending on the guests, the TV is an incentive to visit.)
The bed is full size but ours is queen – as far as I’m concerned it is perfectly fine to put queen sheets on the guest bed.
I’d love to have a separate designated guest bedroom, but that is as close as we’ll get in this condo.
We have two guest rooms. We bought a four bedroom house. The thinking was we would have a kid’s room, a playroom, and a guest room. No kids yet so we have two guest rooms and a room we call an office although it became a dumping ground for furniture that hasn’t found its place yet.
We have a queen bed in one room and two fulls in the other. The two fulls are from our separate apartment days. Eventually when we replace our mattress, we might move our old king in there, but it works out great for now. When my family visits my sister and her husband and their two kids can all share the room but have separate beds. The queen is great for couples.
I enjoy staying with someone a lot more when they have a guest room and I don’t feel like I’m in the way by staying in the middle of their living space. I think in our next house, I’d love for the guest room to have it’s own small bath.
We have two bedroom house — the 2nd bedroom is a home office because my husband works from home. We have a futon in the unfinished basement and try to make the best of it.
I can’t wait to have an actual guest room (someday, in a bigger house!). I think it would be divine to have a whole room that is always perfect and ready for family and friends! I would have a queen size bed in my imaginary guest room!
1. yes.
2. about 7 times a year?
3. double
i’m trying to find/design a longish narrow bench/table to put in that room as a desk so that it can be a spare room + home office nook type thing.
we converted our falling down garage into a guest house.
seattle summers are gorgeous, so we are pretty busy July – Sept. (first come, first served!)
dad in law lives in the San juan islands and travels a lot out of Seattle airport- he usually stays over before or after a trip. our old house is small and has small closets, so we built storage space into the guest house for linens and off season clothing. I also use it for yoga and huzbeau uses rowing machine there in winter.
we have a twin sized built in bed with pull out trundle underneath.
we love it!
i also would love to know about yellow bedspread!
If I was in your situation I’d totally have a guest bedroom (and maybe also use it for storage or something). As it is, the idea of guests being somewhere besides the couch 2 feet away from my bed sounds totally amazing!
1. Yes. Our spare bedroom is the office/guest room.
2. Five times in the year we’ve had it. Mainly parents and siblings who live far away from us, but it’s also good to be able to tell friends they don’t need to worry about catching the last train home.
3. A 120 cm wide IKEA bed. Mainly because that’s the bed I had from when I was single and lived in a small studio, but a bigger bed wouldn’t fit in the room anyway.
I have a guest bedroom, with a double bed. It has been used twice in the past 5 years by guests and more than a few times by my hubby, when I’ve kicked him out of our bed for snoring!
We have a guest bedroom that only gets used a few times a year, but it has come in handy. When we go away, I try to get the petsitter to sleep over by luring him with the lovely guest BR. Doesn’t always work.
There’s a double bed in there and I sometimes think about putting a couch in because many of our friends have kids. That would make it too crowded though.
I should note that we NEVER invite people over (they invite themselves) because we have several cats and our house stinks. If you would like more guests, perhaps we can send some people your way?
We do have a guest room that is absolutely never used. Usually, overnight guests stay on the couch mostly because my mother is obsessive about the cleanliness of that room. Its one of those houses where more rooms are “off limits” than on. The bed is a twin sized bed, it used to belong to father in college.
no guest room here–the air mattress on the floor seems to suffice. i would love a room with an extra bed, though, but i fear it would turn into a dumping ground for random furniture and clothes–or be so comfortable our house guests would never leave!
We have a guest room and love it. It gets used all the time by various friends and family. We have joked that in the summers, when people love visiting the city, it sometimes seems like a B&B around here. We have a queen sized bed.
I love your duvet cover, it looks familiar but I can’t place it. Can you tell me where it’s from??
Thanks!
eM & A Merry Mishap: I answered the duvet cover question up there somewhere… it’s from Dwell (discontinued)!
This is a great topic, as I sometimes struggle with it myself.
1. We do have a guest room.
2. It’s been used twice in about six months.
3. We currently have a full-size futon.
The futon belongs to my sister, who will take it with her when she moves out to the west coast soon. When she moves, she was going to give us the queen bed that’s currently in her guest room, but I’m having second thoughts. I feel like having a room that’s entirely devoted to guests isn’t really all that practical, especially when I think about the possibility of having to give one room up at some point for a baby. When that happens, I’d much rather sacrifice the guest room and keep my craft room and the office, rooms that we use on a regular basis. I think we might wind up buying an attractive futon (maybe the Flex Sofa from CB2)
that we can move up to the office once a baby comes into the picture, rather than being stuck with a huge queen sized bed that only has one use. I figure if people want to visit, they can suffer through sleeping on a futon for one or two nights.
Long story short: I think you should use the room so that you’ll get more use out of it, and guests should come second.
I had a guest bedroom in Manhattan then i had a child!
I loved being able to be host friends of friends of friends from Europe.
If you build it,guests will come! You can invite your manhattan friends to the “country”.
The spare room in my 1100 sq ft house is my guest room, office, and sewing room. I have a long desk along one wall that has space for the computer, filing cabinets, and a sewing station. Right now it is a number of old pieces of furniture pushed together, but I hope to build some kind of custom/built-in piece this summer. The bed is a double, and though my tall friends have feet hanging off the end, it is vastly superior to the sofa or a blow up. I seem to have people stay all the time, and spur-of-the-moment arrivals turn up far more often than I thought possible now that the room is always ready. I also have a scrap of some finished mdf that I can put on top of the bed (I store it under) to create a cutting table for sewing projects!
Adore your blog, such an inspiration.
Where did you find the yellow duvet cover in this photo?
Thanks!
J
The duvet cover is from Dwell.
I love that duvet/bedspread. I usually find guests over rated:-)
really late to the game, but we live in Brooklyn, space is limited but we do have an extra room that is multi-purpose. The only furniture in there is an ESU, Lubi daybed from CB2 with the Kartell Componbili as a side table, and 2 Alex Drawer units from Ikea. As you know, the Eames unit provides plenty of storage and display space, Alex units provide flat storage and the Lubi is great for guests (even 2 at a time) but doesn’t make us feel like we are hanging out in the guest room when we spend time in there. This might be a good way for you to get that music lounge and a guest room where guests can close the door and have their own space but you are not completely surrendering an entire room. also, where did the duvet come from? 😉
1. I don’t have a guest room. I live in a two-bedroom condo in Seattle, and my second bedroom is only set up as an office today…mostly due to my own indecision and inaction! However I’ve been lazily kicking around a plan to make this a sort of guest room/office combo (which would also make it a comfier room for me to relax, given I have no seating besides my desk chair in there today).
2. Since moving to Seattle from the Midwest, I have had a TON of visitors (1-2 times per month at times, with some repeat visitors as well), and I’ve just had to make do with couches, air mattresses or (in the case of my grandparents) giving up my bed.
3. I’d love to find a simple, clean-lined but COMFORTABLE convertible something-or-other to serve as my guest bed. I can’t fit anything bigger than that into this room, so a real bed is out of the question. I think a large chair / small sofa would be about the right size…maybe something that converts to a twin-sized bed. (If you or any other readers have ideas…please let me know!)
I used to have a guest room, but it recently has been transformed into a creative workspace for me to get away to and be productive and it was one of the best decisions we’ve made thus far!! Found as a guest room it looked great but we hard;y ever used it…
Hope this helps.
thea.
xx
(www.forthevisionaries.tumblr.com)
Yes, we have a guest room on the third floor of our house next to the studio. We were recently gifted a 1940’s bedroom set, so the bed is a double. What’s nice is that a vanity came with the set, so our guests have a place to store their toiletries.
We have a decent amount of guests stay with us, but the thing I like about having a guest room, is that when one of us has a bad cold we’d rather not pass on, there is the luxury of having another bed to sleep in.
Tina
(former dweller of a studio apartment)
I have a guest room for the first time ever, and love having it. If you have the room, I highly recommend one, especially a room that is just for guests — less need for you to go in there for something when you do actually have someone staying in it. I love having a space where my guests can enjoy some privacy.
I have a full size bed in mine because (1) that’s what I had and (2) that’s what will fit. In the house of my dreams I would have room for a queen to more comfortably sleep couples.
Another nice benefit of a guest room — you can sleep in it if your bedroom is in shambles because you’re cleaning out your closets or whatever.
“Make a guest room and they will come!!!” We live in the country (an hour from the nearest town) and we made two guest bedrooms in our upstairs. In the six years we’ve lived here at the ranch, we have had well over 200 overnight guests. We decided early on to have only queen, pillow top beds in our home. That way, the white sheets can be used on any bed in the house. Because we have so many friends and family stay over, we tell them that our “house rules” are for them to make up their bed with fresh sheets before they leave. (A second set is always in a drawer in each room) They leave their soiled sheets and towels in a pile in the washroom for me to wash later. That way the beds are ALWAYS made up and ready for more guests. AND I don’t mind having so many guests and besides, I think our guests love leaving their signature on making up the bed! Another little thing I do in our guest rooms before they arrive is to fill a little candy dish on their bedside table and leave a couple bottles of water nearby. Last week I submitted some pictures of our guest bedrooms on HGTV Rate My Space. Check it out by keying in: Rate My Space Two Guest Rooms. Have fun making your guest bedroom a special place to share with family and friends.
I have a guest room, we live in Florida.
We have the space. But, too many house guests is a pain. Some guests are better than others. Don’t make your room too comfortable. How long do you want them to stay? How often do you stay at someone’s house with a guest room? Think about that. That’s a none for me. I like having a nice space and bathroom for my mother and few others. We have guests about every two months. I have had to learn to say no, because sometimes we have other things going on and we need to take a vacation too. I like nice hotels.
1) Yes 🙂 But its closet doubles as my linen closet and I have an armoire in there that stores my winter coats.
2) I live in 45 min. from Manhattan in CT, and some of my city dweller friends will crash at my place overnight, about once a month.
3) Right now I have a day bed from a previous renter which balances out the room and a double decker queen size fancy-pants self-inflating air mattress. I have nice comfortable bedding for it, and guests have their own bathroom. I don’t know if I would ever get a full/queen, the room is kind of cozy. Frankly, it’s nice to have a multi-purpose room.