I had so much fun creating this space for our guests! It is important to me that our guests have a cozy place to stay while visiting. I want it to be a fun space, but relaxing and inviting as well. I feel like a guest bedroom is an afterthought in most houses; a place to store extra stuff that ends up being a catch-all room.
I did not want that to happen. My husband and I like to live minimally. There is so much less stress when you have minimal clutter – or better yet – empty space. So I intentionally removed the closet doors from the guest bedroom closet and created an office nook. To check out more details of the desk nook check out the blog post: Desk Nook.
Creating the office nook allows our guests to have a workspace without adding furniture to the room, all while still allowing us some open shelving storage above. Having it open just forces us to be more intentional about what we store, which I’m not mad about.
We added a bead board wall panel to the back wall and painted it to match the pop of color above the bed (color: Black Bamboo by Behr). Then we added a fun neutral pop of wallpaper on the sides to give this little space some personality.
When we first moved into this house, this space was just your average small bedroom. It had wall to wall carpet, a basic neutral paint job and old cheap baseboards. It wasn’t terrible but it just needed some love. My biggest want for this room was to remove the carpet because…gross.
So we replaced the carpet with new pre-finished hardwood floors and thicker moulding to match what was already existing in the main space of the house. This made the room feel so much bigger! The taller baseboard adds more of a high end look, it only cost about $100 to upgrade the baseboards for this room and I think it was money well spent!
My goal with our house was to add character and interest without adding “stuff”. So I chose to execute that idea with wall details, creating a board and batten wall. I decided I wanted to do board and batten on the bottom half of the wall painted white so it would contrast with the black bed frame. I’m a lover of neutrals and muted colors, so I chose a dark earthy green for the top half of the wall and added a wood ledge to break up the wall adding some organic natural tones and also serving as a place to display some decor.
This wall changed the feel of this space completely. It added depth and gave this room some interest without cluttering it up. Once all the architectural details were finished I wanted to bring natural organic textures into the room to make the space soft and cozy. Pillows and blankets are a great way to add texture to your space and soften everything up.
I added a wood peg rack for our guests to hang items and tie in some of the wood tones from the wall ledge and desk nook together. This serves as another spot for decor, but keeps it minimal and out of the way.
Another small – but significant – change we made to this room was switching out the ceiling light fixture. I cannot stress enough how important lighting is to a space. The previous light fixture was dingy and had yellow lighting (welcome to the 70’s), which can make even the best designed space look awful. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for the more aged lighting effect, but for a small bedroom, opt for daylight. White LED lightbulbs create a clean, modern and ‘naturally-lit’ room. It will change the feel of the entire space.
We cannot wait for our family and friends to enjoy this space we created! I hope this inspires you to add some coziness to your guest room!
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