31 Guest Room Ideas That Will Wow Your Visitors
When it comes to designing a beautiful bedroom for guests, comfort is key. Guest room ideas should allow for a welcoming space that combines the amenities of a hotel with the intimacy and charm of a home. To create an inviting design, consider the essentials for any road-weary traveler: a luxurious bed, a chair for reading or making phone calls, and those frequently forgotten items such as phone chargers and toiletries. The guest room is also the perfect spot to experiment with decor trends that you like but might not want to live with every day in your own bedroom—think bold wall treatments, bright colors, and twin beds. These gorgeous spaces featured by AD offer decor ideas from top designers including Miles Redd, Sig Bergamin, and Anouska Hempel. Create a room with these guest bedroom ideas and your visitors won’t ever want to leave.
How do I style my guest room?
When figuring out how to style your guest room, consider who your guests tend to be. Do you often have guests stay for just a night or two, or do you have family members come stay for months at a time? As simple as it might seem, decorating for overnight guests lends itself to more dramatic, fun design choices, while you should think more utilitarian for monthslong guests.
If you tend to only have guests over in certain pockets of the year (think in the summertime or holiday season), consider ways to make it more functional year round for yourself too. Picking a Murphy bed or daybed can allow your guest room to more easily pull double duty by saving room for workout equipment, a home office set up, or art equipment.
How do you make a guest room look like a hotel?
Consider what you love about hotel rooms. It probably boils down to a few specific details: comfortable bedding, a defined seating area, and a lack of clutter. Try to recreate these elements in your guest room, then consider smaller details too—things like bedside sconces or a folding luggage rack if you want to totally commit to the hotel room vibe.
How to decorate a spare guest room?
While you’re probably used to decorating just for your own needs, or the needs of your immediate family members, in the rest of your home, coming up with spare bedroom ideas is an exercise in anticipating the needs of guests. Just as you’d attempt to see to your visitors’s needs at a dinner party, the best feeling when hosting an overnight guest is to have all of their needs attended to before they even consider them. Small details like blackout curtains, a bedside table lamp, and empty drawers or shelves for them to store their clothes in can combine to a pleasurable experience for your guest and the satisfaction of a hosting job well done for yourself. Read on for more specific guest room ideas.
Photo: Tim Lenz1/31Add bookshelves
Any guest would be smitten with a bed niche like the one in this guest space in a MK Workshop–designed apartment. A bookcase allows a little more personality into the design of your guest room, even in a small space. Plus, when placed alongside the bed like in this bedroom, it offers a convenient space for guests to put their watch, phone, or a cup of water before bedtime.
Photo: Madeline Tolle; Art: Augustine Kofie2/31Use it as a home office
If you don’t anticipate having guests too often, using your guest room as a full-on home office is a wise choice. At this LA home, AD100 designer Mandy Cheng differentiated the bedroom section from the office space by lining the area surrounding the bed with tongue-and-groove paneling and solidifying the office space by installing a built-in desk.
Photo: Douglas Friedman; Styling: Adam Fortner3/31Add wallpaper
Something you might notice in a lot of our favorite guest rooms? Gorgeous wallpaper. When you’re looking to create a space for visitors that’ll make them feel more like they’re on an exciting getaway, and less like they’re on a bed not as comfortable as their own back home, a transportive wallpaper is the perfect solution. In this space designed by Ashby Collective, a park-like Schumacher mural offers a unique and dignified setting for a week or two away from home. If you’re concerned about wallpapering an entire room, an accent wall can also have a major impact.
Photo: Simon Brown4/31Keep it roomy
Rather than trying to stuff your guest room with as many fun furnishings as possible, keep it roomy, like Emma Sims Hilditch did at this English estate. Extra empty space will be much appreciated when it comes time for your guests to open up those extra large suitcases, so considering this is especially important if you’re decorating a small guest bedroom.
Photo: Ambroise Tézenas; Styling: Carolina Irving5/31Go monochromatic
Settling on a defined color scheme is always a good idea, but why not make your color scheme simply one color? We love the very blue guest bedroom decor in this Pierre Sauvage–designed French chateaux for its maximalist prints, but monochrome works just as well for making a room feel calm if you forgo the patterns.
Photo: Pieter Estersohn6/31Make it feel lived in
A circa-1840 New England bed anchors the Charleston, South Carolina–inspired guest room in Andrea Anson’s New York town house. Vintage furnishings and unique pieces can create a comfortable feeling in a guest room.
Photo: Douglas Friedman7/31Channel a modern beach retreat
Sandy tones and natural textiles can help create a modern beachy vibe with your guest room decor, whether or not you’re anywhere near an ocean. Vanessa Alexander and architect Johannes Zingerle created this guest bedroom at a St. Barts retreat, complete with a ceiling fan to keep things extra cool after a day by the pool.
Photo: Read McKendree; Styling: Frances Bailey8/31Center on a fireplace
Okay, you might not be in the position to add a fireplace to your guest room, but if you do have one, be sure to make it the focal point. Adding a sitting area around the fireplace, if you have the space, or simply decorating the mantel, like decorator Chauncey Boothby did in this Connecticut estate, is a wonderful way to ensure your guests are thoroughly charmed by their temporary living space.
Photo: Kensington Leverne9/31Use a calming color palette
This Studio Ashby–designed London home is far from minimal, but its warm color palette is ultracalming.
Photo: Durston Saylor10/31Add a TV
Especially if you’re going for the comfort of a hotel room, adding a television to your guest room is a surefire way to please your guests, especially if you expect to have kids staying with you. The placement of the TV in this guest room designed by Cathy Purple Cherry allows it to be watched comfortably without having the TV dominate the room’s design.
Photo: François Halard11/31Make it dramatic
At photographer and antiques dealer Matthias Vriens-McGrath’s Los Angeles house, a guest room features a Directoire wrought-iron bed draped in antique toile; an angora tulu rug covers the bench.
Photo: Björn Wallander12/31Add two beds
A guest room in a São Paulo residence designed by Sig Bergamin features walls decorated by Nathalie Morhange, Victoria Mill bed linens, and Arraiolos carpets; the armchair is upholstered in a Romo cotton-linen.
Photo: Pieter Estersohn13/31Add a reading nook
In architect Steve Mensch’s house above the Hudson River, near Rhinebeck, New York, an Adesso lamp keep watch over a guest room’s Modloft bed, which is dressed in a Room & Board wool blanket. The Mies van der Rohe chair is vintage, the side table is by B&B Italia, and the rug is by Calvin Klein Home.
Photo: Tim Beddow14/31Pile on the pillows
A plush duvet and plenty of pillows will ensure that even the lightest of sleepers are comfortable in your guest bedroom. American-oak beams crisscross the ceiling in a top-floor guest room of designer Anouska Hempel’s manor home in Wiltshire, England.
Photo: Roger Davies15/31Prints on prints on prints
Inside Sig Bergamin’s São Paulo home, a brilliant ikat envelops the guest room, where the headboard upholstery and curtain fabric are both by Kravet; the luggage is vintage Louis Vuitton.
Photo: Eric Piasecki16/31Make it feel grand
Peter Rogers employed a pair of Regency beds in the guest room of his New Orleans home, along with an antique Swedish gilded stool.
Photo: Oberto Gili17/31Use welcoming colors
This guest room in a Martha’s Vineyard home is outfitted with twin beds designed by Mark Cunningham; the curtains are of a Robert Kime fabric from John Rosselli & Assoc. and were made by Anthony Lawrence-Belfair.
Photo: Scott Frances18/31Include a work space
A Hamptons guest room designed by Foley & Cox is appointed with a Blu Dot bed and a glass-top trestle table by Richard Wrightman Design; the floor lamp is by Isamu Noguchi.
Photo: Miguel Flores-Vianna19/31Make it immersive
Give your guest a proper escape by going fully immersive with your design. A plethora of patterns enlivens a guest room in a Connecticut home designed by Miles Redd, from a Farrow & Ball wallpaper to a vintage fabric on the Louis XVI settee and chair.
Photo: Miguel Flores-Vianna20/31Choose a theme to guide your decor decisions
In a bamboo-themed Florida guest room by John Stefanidis, a Regency bed has curtains of white linen trimmed with grosgrain ribbon; the walls are stenciled with a motif taken from a Stefanidis-designed fabric used in an adjacent sitting room, and a kilim covers the floor.
Photo: Ngoc Minh Ngo21/31Display a commanding work of art
Modeled after the work of Alexander Calder, a Rio de Janeiro guest room’s maguey-fiber wall hanging was handwoven in Central America in the 1970s; the bed, created by the homeowner, the late interior designer Alberto Pinto, is upholstered in a mix of leather and fabric.
Photo: Pieter Estersohn22/31Employ plush carpeting
In the guest room of a New Orleans home designed by Lee Ledbetter, the bedside tables are vintage Paul McCobb, and the Louis XVI–style bench is clad in a Pollack velvet.
Photo: Pieter Estersohn23/31Play up your natural surroundings
Designed by Nancy Morton, a Florida guest room with outdoor access and tons of greenery nearby flaunts murals of fantastical plants on the walls.
Photo: Roger Davies24/31Don’t forget storage
Just because your guests won’t be around for long doesn’t mean they couldn’t use a place to store their clothing while they’re staying over. In Andrew Cogan’s Shelter Island, New York, home, a guest room is furnished with a 1950s Italian bed and a ’60s Scandinavian dresser.
Photo: Miguel Flores-Vianna25/31Choose an artful bedframe
In a handsome Chicago prewar apartment designed by Jean-Louis Deniot, guests slumber in a statement-making bed designed by Phyllis Morris in the 1970s.
Photo: Haris Kenjar26/31Go moody
While you might not be bold enough to paint your everyday sleeping space in a dark tone, a moody color scheme is the perfect fit for a guest bedroom. The aubergine wall color in this Heidi Caillier–designed guest room is Black Magic from Portola Paints & Glazes.
27/31Add a fun pendant light
Whether a grand chandelier is the move, or something more modern like the Nelson Saucer Bubble Pendant in this guest room designed by Chad Dorsey, an unexpected lighting choice is always a welcome addition to your guest bedroom makeover.
Photo: Eric Piasecki28/31Put comfort first
In the guest room of a Bridgehampton, New York, home decorated by the Steven Gambrel, overscale 1960s table lamps flank a Gambrel-designed bed dressed with Pottery Barn sheets. The vintage rattan mirrors came from a Paris flea market.
Photo: Björn Wallander29/31Simplify things
A walnut-paneled guest room in Alex Rodriguez's Briggs Edward Solomon–designed Florida home displays a large Adam McEwen work; the wall light is by Flos, and the Warren Platner side tables are by Knoll.
Photo: Pieter Estersohn30/31Add curtains
Even if you like waking up to the sun beaming into your bedroom, you never know if a guest’ll need full darkness to sleep. Add curtains into your bedroom, and go for blackout curtains specifically if you really aim to please. In Ray Booth and John Shea’s Nashville, Tennessee, home, a guest room features a Groundworks wallpaper from Lee Jofa and a custom-made bed.
Photo: Pieter Estersohn31/31Brighten the space with fresh flowers
In the guest room of a Southampton, New York, retreat designed by David Netto, the Le Manach cotton on the walls and headboard and Rosa Bernal Collection fabric used for the pillow shams are both from Claremont; a Rose Tarlow Melrose House table lamp perches on a mahogany nightstand from Sutter Antiques.
