One thing I was totally unprepared for when deciding I wanted to create a cute guest room was…the lack of knowledge I had about HOW to make a cute guest room. When I first started thinking about taking our tiny spare bedroom from bare-bones (literally) to somewhat cozy I immediately got overwhelmed. After the initial excitement died down I came to realise that I didn’t have the first clue how to style a small space with minimal square footage and essentially no budget.
Trust me, there are soooo many awful hacks online that claim to trick your eye into thinking your room is larger than it is with certain types of furniture, rugs, etc. But honestly, most of those “tips” just won’t cut it. I purchased the cheapest full double bed frame I could find and shoved it into the smallest bedroom in our house.
Now don’t get me wrong, it fit perfectly. But the problem was that it blocked the entire walkway to the window and there was ZERO space anywhere for anything else.
Not to mention every guest that stayed had to crawl over the side of the bed just to go to the window.
It looked ridiculous. I sold that frame on Facebook for $25 and bought a regular single mattress. I found an adorable wooden bed frame at a car boot sale for $35 that used to belong to the owners daughter.
Painted it white and bought a memory foam mattress topper from Aldi while they were having a sale. I’ll never sleep anywhere else ever again. Storage is KEY if you want your little room to feel put together or you WILL ruin it.
I once hung shelving ridiculously high up on the wall…what was I thinking?! Guests would have struggled to reach the middle of their body up to put a shirt on the shelf. Madness.
Everything in my room is now reachable by guests without them having to contort themselves like a crazy person. My grandma recently moved out of her big house into a nice bungalow and ended up with an old SCHOOLINGERY ottoman that she was going to donate. Said ‘oompedy had to have been from the 19tiies because it’s covered in that ugly brown velvet, but hey.
It’s sturdy as all hell. Guests can sit on it to put their shoes on and slide their dirty trainers underneath. Bless them.
Inside I stuffed it with extra blankets and pillows! Cleaned years of dirt off of that thing tho lol. Hooks.
Seriously. Whenever anyone stays over I always feel bad because I have NOWHERE for them to put their stuff. Hooks on the back of the door changed my life.
Okay, exaggerating. But they help SO MUCH. I hung up 4 simple hooks that I got from B&Q (collected dust in there for ages) and suddenly guests stopped hanging all of their clothes on the chair and throwing their dirty laundry on the floor.
Can’t believe I didn’t change the light sooner. The room came with this gross yellow fluorescent light hanging down in the middle of the room. It made EVERYONE that stayed look like death.
Started streaming straight out of their heads! So sad. I picked up a simple pendant light ($30 from a lighting shop) and added this cute little bedside lamp that I found in a local thrift store.
Suddenly my grim, hospital-affiliated guest room turned into something fairly cozy. Cozy as a small box room can be anyway. Curtains were another nightmare for me.
Hung these huge ass navy blue curtains in there and sat back waiting to feel sophisticated. Friends sat up and taken aback at how tiny the window now looked. I may have cried a little.
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Went back to Dunelm, exchanged them for two simple white curtains and voila. Natural light streams in during the day and we still have privacy. Bonus, white curtains make the room feel more spacious instead of the curtains eating up all of the light like blue did.
Mirrors are another ‘key to making a small room look bigger’ trick. Everybody says it and they’re not lying. I bought a WHALLLA of mirror to hang across from our teeny weeny window and it does make the room feel more spacious.
Picked it up from the local British Heart Association shop for $12. Pretty rusted around the edges but you’d never notice unless you were looking for it 😉 It helps us make use of whatever little sunlight we get in our room and really helps open up the space. SO MUCH research went into what colours I wanted to paint the walls.
I read blog post after blog post about what the best colour scheme to use is for small rooms. In the end I kept it simple and went with plain ole white. Not bright white because thats too stark, but not too greyish either.
Just plain white. It took me an entire weekend to finish painting and cost me $28 to buy enough paint. Instead of painting anything colourful, I used some of our favourite pillows & blankets to give it pops of colour!
Instagram really sold me on buying a plant for this room because every Instagram Influencer & their mum swear by plants making a space feel more welcoming. Bought. The.
Hard. To. Kill.
Pothos. Plant. Because yes, they actually are.
And hey, it works! Loving having something green in there that adds life & personality to our empty room. It also makes it feel like someone cares about the room too.
Temperature control is difficult for small rooms. They heat up so quickly in the summer & freeze in the winter. Whenever we have guests and it gets TOO hot in there I purchased a fan from Argos for under $20 that sits on our bedside table.
I make sure there’s an extra blanket tucked away somewhere that guests can help themselves to if they want/need it. I cannot tell you how awful it is being too hot or too cold when you’re sleeping in somebody else’s bed. It’s the small things.
Little things that anyone can do to make your guests feel extra special. I bought a small vase/bowl and left it filled with spare jewellery, coins, etc. on top of our dresser.
Always keep glasses & bottles of water next to each bed (another hack I picked up from staying in Premier Inn’s when we travel).
Leave your phone charger plugged- in and accessible for guests to use. Run to the Co- op and grab a stack of mags from the discount rack. Hide them on the bedside tables.
Another favourite of mine? This basket I threw together. Somewhere I read that travellers love when you have a ‘ basket of nonsense’ for them when they stay.
Fill with random things you probably have lying around the house anyways: travel sized shampoo, extra toothbrushes, phone charging cables, packets of tissues, some delicious biscuits & ACTUAL coffee sachets. Not that dreaded.instant.instaSUCCESS stuff. Cost me about $15 to throw this basket together and people always compliment it when they stay.
Hope this helped some of you out there who are wanting to improve your spare room! Let me know if you have any other tips 🙂
