How to decorate and furnish a guest room?

The guest room challenge –you want to your guests to be impressed by the décor and to feel comfortable in the room. The worst thing would be for guests to mutter under their breath that they’ll never come back. Of course there are some you may not want to come back!

But we’re going to guess that in general you value their friendship or they wouldn’t be staying so where do you start with the decoration of that particular room?

The first thing must be to acknowledge it’s a room that needs to strike a line down the middle of many factors and appeal to both male and female, young and old alike; true a bit of a challenge.
Some of the age old guide lines still hold strong though – you know the stuff – blue tends to be a bit cold, red violent, green restful and magnolia perhaps the most neutral of colours.

On that basis, going for a neutral base for carpets and walls will always be a good foundation and introducing accent colour to one wall in the form of a quality paper like the fabulous options from F S Schumacher would be a fantastic place to start (and frankly if you can’t afford them, the website is simply full of inspiration).

I also love the new Osborne and Little ranges  which hint at the more classic or floral look without being overboard.  The co-ordinated style is back with vengeance including textured, woven, paper backed linens and more (and more) with curtains and fabrics to match and contrast.

Don’t forget the bed itself though. There is nothing worse than a lovely, stylish bedroom and a bed that gives your guests back ache! If your guests have uncomfortable nights they are unlikely to want to stay overnight. Pick a bed that is not too soft or firm.  If you have a firm bed then a mattress topper is the answer. If your bed is too soft and sags then unfortunately it is time to change. Have a choice of pillows if you can. You don’t need to spend a fortune. You can get good quality relatively inexpensive pillows in Ikea

If you often have children staying then two single beds that are easily moved apart and an oversized tufted, upholstered headboard works well on single beds to large super kings.

avatar Name: Alexandra Eager
About: Formerly Finance and Operations Director of anmarketing agency. Now luckily semi-retired. Amateur interior design buff, constantly experimenting on my own home (much to the chargrins of hubby) and passionate about anything to do with home interiors and improvements. Wish my house was bigger!

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Posts by Alexandra Eager (49)