Choosing Guest Room Decor
Picture it. You’re twelve, maybe thirteen, and it’s a Friday or Saturday night. Your new best friend from school is sleeping over for the very first time, and everything has to be perfect. The house must be spotless, of course. The sheets and bedding for the guest bed must be freshly washed and made. The pantry must be stocked with more than just ingredients. There must be no clutter as far as the eye can see.
It sounds easy enough, right? Except for the unfortunate reality that maybe the memo was not made as clear to the rest of the family, or in this specific instance as it occurs in your mind, the “other tenants.” You will be sure to file a complaint later and insist on speaking with the landlord’s supervisor.
If you can relate to the feeling of wanting your guest to feel at home in your home, yet feeling like that simple desire is impossible to achieve without significant hurdles, you are not alone. The good news is that the autonomy we have in the homes we build is far different from the homes we were raised in. If you have ever been told “my roof, my rules” and rolled your eyes, think about it this way. Now, it’s your roof and your rules.
At SoftFrame® Designs, we’re here to help you create the guest room you dreamed of offering your friends as a child. The key is choosing versatile pieces of decor that work for your guests when they visit and for everyday use when the sleepover ends.
How To Create A Cozy Guest Room
A genuinely welcoming guest room is not the result of over styling. To avoid that common mistake, focus on bringing softness, comfort, and flexibility into the space. The best way to start is with a SoftFrame® Bed Frame.
Handcrafted in California using 100% CertiPUR US certified foam, widely recognized as one of the highest quality foam standards in the industry, each piece is finished with resilient, soft touch fabrics designed for years of use. All of our products are made with a commitment to sustainable practices at every stage of production, ensuring they are not only beautiful but also more mindful of the planet.
To keep your guests feeling at ease, we recommend our Classic Bed Frame style. Of the three styles we offer, this is our most space savvy design, making it the perfect choice to soften your guest bedroom while also fitting practically in the space for everyday use when it becomes a multipurpose room. The key when choosing a bed frame is to keep it simple. The guest room should not be so stylized that it cannot easily shift into an office space. So yes, stay away from decor or furniture pieces that draw more attention for spectacle than for functionality.
Another way to make a guest room feel inviting is to ensure there is designated clear space. The difference between designing your bedroom and your guest room is that the latter will be filled with items you didn’t necessarily account for. Depending on how long a guest is staying, they may arrive with multiple suitcases, portable exercise equipment, beauty products, or even their favorite pillow. Leaving space in the room for them to park and unpack their belongings is the easiest way to mean it when you say, “Make yourself at home.”
Designing A Minimalist Guest Room
Building on the idea that guest rooms should be designed with intentional restraint rather than over-decorating, it’s important to think about how minimalist sleep spaces actually work. We recently spoke about the return of low beds within the interior design sphere, highlighting that inconvenient experience most of us have had when arriving at a hotel and spending the first five minutes taking piles of unnecessary pillows off the bed.
That being said, a minimalist guest room does not mean telling your guests to BYOP (bring your own pillow.) Our Round Bolster Pillows are the perfect addition to a minimalist guest room, accomplishing a streamlined aesthetic without overcrowding the space. They may appear purely decorative at first glance, but once your guest is up late reading or watching TV, they will appreciate the back support.
The Effortless Bedroom Refresh
Guest rooms should be low pressure spaces. In other words: they do not need to be perfect. When designing your guest room, consider what might make life easier for anyone.
For example, you might initially think of putting the coolest table lamp you can find at your local vintage shop in the guest room as a conversation starter. Instead, consider something like a USB Task Lamp. When your guests roll over to turn off the light before bed and realize they don’t need to get untucked and travel across the room to plug in their phones, but can simply place their phone on top of the lamp’s base to charge or plug in their charger on the side, they will thank you in the morning. It seems small, but those details matter.
Modern Home Design Guest Rooms
Modern home design favors ease and adaptability. While you may have dreamed of having a guest room equipped with every possible gaming system imaginable as a child, there is not much reason for a PlayStation in an office. Or maybe there is, because life is about balance.
All jokes aside, anything that exists in your guest room should be able to stay there when your guest leaves. You shouldn’t need to strip anything away to make it have less personality or character. Take shelving units, for example. Opting for closet shelving with rails serves a dual purpose. Your guests have a place to hang their clothes when they arrive, and you have a surface to place storage bins that hold whatever the room requires when your guest leaves. Opting for neutral shades like wood or white can help make the space adaptable and ready for whatever the day or week requires.
The Balance Between Coziness and Minimalism
There is an ideal balance between cozy and minimalist, and that balance can be accomplished without the room feeling sparse. Consider what your guest might need as bare essentials: a bed, a place for clothes, a light source, and outlets for technology. Sure, you could put a mattress on the floor next to a cardboard box for folded clothes, with a candle across the room and an extension cord stretching across the floor. That might be the most minimal selection of items when it comes to budget and aesthetic, but it misses the purpose of minimalism and is far from cozy.
Minimalism asks you to think about the idea that less is more, but it also asks you to consider what is sustainable, high quality, and universally functional. Many people opt out of headboards when designing minimalist bedrooms to achieve the platform bed look. In a guest room, you might want to pair the Classic Bed Frame with a matching SoftFrame® Classic Headboard. Your guest will appreciate having a soft surface to lean against at night more than they will remember feeling like they were sleeping in the showroom of an Ikea.
You can read more about how we have weighed the pros and cons of headboards here.
Your Guest Room Is An Extension Of Your Home
Your guest room should be a thoughtful extension of your home that feels comfortable, uncluttered, and easy for both host and guest. It shouldn’t make you or your guest feel like you’ve entered a space where touching or using anything will sound an alarm.
At the end of the day, whether it’s you or your guest exiting the room, walking into the living room or kitchen shouldn’t feel like walking out of an exhibit and into a place where people actually live. The perfect guest room is an extension of your home in the sense that it relates to the rest of your home design and decor. Whether through a shared color palette, recurring plants or lighting fixtures, or unifying accessories like candles, don’t forget: Your house, your rules.
For more information on how SoftFrame® Designs has made the furniture setup process effortless and efficient, check out our How It Works page.