Guest Bedroom Ideas

Be a great host--welcome guests to bedrooms decorated with their comfort in mind.

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Dress Twin Beds for Glamour

Choose a Daybed for Dual-Purpose Rooms

Dress the Bed in Simple, Comfy Bedding

Formal Style with Practical Function

Give Guests Space for Stuff

Guest Bedroom Makeover

Create a Serene Mood

Carve Out a Corner for Guests

Adapt a Dual-Purpose Room

Include Thoughtful Amenities

Welcome Guests with Cottage Style

Choose a Daybed That Suits Your Style

Dress Up a Daybed

Consider Bedding Options

Make Space in the Home Office

Create a Home Away from Home

Try an Unexpected Room Arrangement

Create Comfort with Colonial Style

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Dress Twin Beds for Glamour

This 11x11-foot guest room offers an elegant welcome, with ceiling-mounted linen valances and draperies over two twin beds. Instead of more draperies at the windows, Roman shades provide privacy and light control. Between the beds, an early-19th-century French commode with its original paint serves as a nightstand. Lamps provide reading light for each bed.

Choose a Daybed for Dual-Purpose Rooms

If your guest room leads a double life--as your home office or studio, for example --a daybed is a practical option. Piled with pillows, this tailored, raffia-covered daybed is topped with a faux-leather coverlet and can serve as casual seating.

When guests come to stay, pull up a side table to serve as a nightstand, stow half of the pillows, and your guest bed is ready.

Dress the Bed in Simple, Comfy Bedding

Make guests feel welcome with a comfy bed dressed in a plump duvet and crisp sheets. Sateen or bamboo sheets are silky soft to the touch; all-white bedding conveys hotel-style luxury.

A tray of treats and flowers from your garden are an especially thoughtful touch.

Formal Style with Practical Function

This stylish wood-frame sofa is actually a trundle bed in disguise. The box frame below the sofa rolls out to reveal a twin mattress. The seat cushion on the sofa is also firm enough for sleeping. Side tables with matching lamps serve as nightstands when guests come.

The desk in the dormer is a thoughtful addition that can serve as a dressing table for guests as well as a work desk.

Give Guests Space for Stuff

To make your guests feel welcome, give them space to put everything they bring. The movable bed-tray at the end of this bed offers a spot to stow the suitcase, and the bedside tables are clear of clutter.

Leave some books and magazines in the room in case they like to read before going to sleep.

Guest Bedroom Makeover

Make over a bedroom for under $1000 and make a special space for guests in the process. Freshen beige walls with a coat of light green paint. Fashion a headboard by stretching artists' canvas over a frame and hand-painting a stylized design.

Buy a large sisal rug and paint it with a checkerboard design using acrylic crafts paints. Bring in a flea-market daybed and slipcover an old chair to provide guest room seating. An end-of-bed bench serves as a luggage rack. Keep an extra blanket in a basket under the bench.

Create a Serene Mood

Decorating cues for the guest bedroom can come from your home's location. In this house by the ocean, maritime toiles and sea-horse-embellished pillows add a covert coastal touch. The lamp base resembles a shell, a subtle reference to the magnificent ocean view outside. Downy comforters adorn the faux-bamboo twin beds, and London shades soften the windows.

Carve Out a Corner for Guests

If you don't have a separate room for guests, carve a corner out of a multipurpose room. Upholstered wall panels and a platform daybed turn this corner into a guest nook. A wall-mount lamp provides a little bit of reading light.

Adapt a Dual-Purpose Room

This graphic designer's studio becomes a bedroom when guests arrive. The sofa on the right wall is a daybed. Cabinets at each end store artists' supplies, but the tops can be cleared off to give guests a place to put their things.

Include Thoughtful Amenities

Bed-and-breakfast amenities will make your guests' visit memorable. Decorate the bedside table with fresh flowers from the garden, or provide a clock and some books to make visitors feel at home. Serve them breakfast in bed and they may never want to leave!

Welcome Guests with Cottage Style

Hand-painted twin beds framed in creamy sheer curtains convey romantic cottage style in this guest room. Falling from valances edged in fringe, the curtains provide a plain block of color to show off the painted headboards and bird prints.

A wall sconce illuminates each bed and emphasizes the sense of snug enclosure. An old-fashioned telephone on the nightstand adds to the vintage charm.

Choose a Daybed That Suits Your Style

This elegant daybed anchors an intimate seating group within the larger living room and serves as a visual divide between two areas of the room.

Daybeds often look like converted twin beds and can look out of place when added to a contemporary home--but not this one. This daybed boasts a shape that combines the clean, straight lines of contemporary styling and the detailing of fine upholstered furniture.

Dress Up a Daybed

Layers of plump pillows dress up a daybed for daytime use. A lace-edged tablecloth makes a pretty cottage-style coverlet, but if you're actually going to sit on the daybed, use a tablecloth with a sturdy weave that won't be damaged by frequent use.

Consider Bedding Options

Handsome wing-chair-style headboards give these twin beds the appearance of formal chaises. Chair-and-a-half sleepers and love seat sleepers also offer furniture-style good looks while performing double duty as guest beds. Test the mattresses before you buy to make sure your guests will sleep comfortably.

Make Space in the Home Office

If your office doubles as guest space, be sure you can stash paperwork out of sight and clear off the desk for guests to use while in residence. This sofalike daybed accommodates visitors for overnight stays.

Create a Home Away from Home

This guest suite above a detached garage enjoys ocean views and unfettered light. Blue walls and blue upholstery combine with white trimwork and bedding to invoke a sea-and-sky theme. The king-size bed is dressed in white linens and the sofa in white denim.

A suite like this becomes a home away from home. Make sure the bath is well stocked with essentials--towels, wash cloths, soap, and toilet tissue along with small bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste.

Try an Unexpected Room Arrangement

Pulling furniture away from the walls to create conversational groupings is standard advice for living rooms, and it works in guest rooms too. These beige upholstered daybeds are ready to welcome weary travelers, but stripped of the bed linens they're backless sofas perfect for cocktail-party socializing.

A large ottoman in the center serves as coffee table and nightstand. The draperies are lace at the top, allowing light to filter in, and a tighter weave below for privacy.

Create Comfort with Colonial Style

Heirloom furniture and toile wallpaper give this bedroom classic Colonial style. When you're expecting guests for more than an overnight stay, clear out some dresser drawers so they don't have to live out of their suitcases.

Guest Bedroom Ideas

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