Guest bedrooms often get overlooked. We don’t use them ourselves, so we often dump our decor “leftovers” there. The closets get used for seasonal or suitcase storage, the furniture is mismatched, the lighting is inadequate. We don’t care a lot, because we don’t use them. We’re satisfied to let them be “good enough” for the occasional random visitor, right?
Well, if you don’t have guests all that often, that may be ok. But when you have frequent visitors, it’s so much nicer to make them feel not only at home, but special staying with you. In fact, if you do it right, they may not want to leave. Proceed with caution, depending on how much you like your visitors.
When we bought our house, it was a builder’s spec. Construction was complete when we first looked at it, so we had no input into the tile/carpet/paint/etc choices. The builder’s “design person” (quotation fingers) chose everything. I’d like to find this person and beat them about the neck and shoulders. They were on some kind of sick, sadistic mission to make this house as BROWN as possible. I picture them going into the place where they order everything and saying, “Yes, I’d like brown, everything brown, as brown as possible. Oh, and put those horrible nipple lights everywhere, while you’re at it. Thanks.”
I am not into brown.
There’s nothing wrong with brown. If you’re a pair of boots or a puppy or a beautiful bar of chocolate, I’m good with it. But if you’re my house, well, not so much. On top of that, the orientation of the house and the position of the windows all combine to create a dark, cold, (brown) cave.
This is not the effect I’m going for.
We liked the floor plan and the neighborhood, so we bought the house. And I’ve been battling the brown ever since. I can only explain the guest bedroom project this way: one day, I just freaked out. I lost it over the brown, especially in that room. We chose a room intended to be a home office to serve as our guest bedroom. It was the only other room on the first floor besides the master bedroom adjacent to a full bath, so it made sense. It’s pretty small, but it doesn’t need much beyond the basics to make an occasional houseguest comfortable. I’m going to call it “cozy”.
I cringe even posting these “before” pictures for you. It was SO bad. You can see my test paint splotches on the wall. Those were there for 12-18 months (cringe) before I finally went nuts resolved that issue.
I didn’t choose any of the colors in those splotches, by the way. One day I was, ahem, “researching important things” on Pinterest when I came across this, originally posted on Harper’s Bazaar website :
Gorgeous, huh? Drool-worthy. I know. I fell for it immediately. I loved how crisp and clean and bright it looked, compared to the sad, brown hole I was stuffing our guests into. I try to offer more hospitality than that these days. Let’s never speak of it again.
Now, I knew we did not have room for this much furniture in our guest room. That was ok. I gave some thought to who stays with us the most and what they’d need. My mother- and father-in-law were our most frequent houseguests at that time, coming out every few months or so from California to visit once our baby was born. My mother-in-law came the most, sometimes alone, sometimes with my father-in-law. They would generally stay for a week at a time, which meant closet and dresser space would be appreciated. They also love to retreat to their room to read in the evening before going to sleep, so I knew we’d have to provide good light and a place to lay a book for each of them.
But first, that nasty paint had to go. It is everywhere in this house and it’s called (I promise, I am NOT making this up) “Spiced Vinegar”. Just close your eyes for a minute and picture what THAT must look like. “Spiced Vinegar.” Because “Baby Poop” was taken, I assume.
I didn’t agonize over it. I looked at a few shades of white (don’t get me started on white paint, no “white” paint is actually, really white, as it happens) and went with Benjamin Moore’s Cotton Balls. I had used it in our daughter’s bathroom and I liked it well enough in there. You can waste YEARS of your life agonizing over the right paint color and never accomplish anything, my friends. Don’t do that to yourselves. Just pick one.
SO much better. Even with bad lighting and pictures taken with an iPhone, it is SO, SO, SO much better. So, you see? Even if you don’t pick the “perfect” white or whatever color, anything else is bound to be better than Baby Poop.
I thought it would be fun to do the ceiling in a light robin’s egg blue. Folks in the true South* have been painting their ceilings blue for years, a tradition born out of folklore and superstition. No matter why they do it, it’s gorgeous. In a room as white as this one was going to be, I thought we needed to have a little fun with the ceiling. When you’re decorating a small room that you can close off from the rest of the house (thus, you don’t have to look at it all the time), I always feel safer doing something bold or unusual.
* Texas is not part of “the South”. No one here considers living in Texas living in the South. Texas is Texas. But I digress.
Yesssssss. NOW we’re talkin’.
I bought the bed in a hurry right after we moved into the house, because I knew my in-laws were coming to celebrate our daughter’s 3rd birthday in a few weeks. I wasn’t sure of the “design direction” I wanted to take in the room then, so I just played it safe and went with white. Considering how tiny this room is, I knew I’d need to be creative about storage, too, so the Stratton Platform Storage bed from Pottery Barn worked well for this room. I store extra linens and towels for the guest bedroom and bath in the drawers. I intended to buy a headboard for it as well, but it was backordered at the time and I just couldn’t wait. The Arrival of the In-Laws* was imminent.
*I love The In-Laws. They know this. It’s all good.
Maybe I’ll find a headboard one day. It’s still on my to-do list.
Honestly, once I just went for it, the whole room was done in about a week and a half. I knew the color blue I wanted for the bedding, and I found it at Pottery Barn Teen. Don’t be afraid to shop the kid decor retailers, if their grown-up counterparts fail you. The lamps and curtains I found at Target. Once I had that blue color in mind, I just homed in on it whenever I went shopping for the room. I didn’t intend for the design to turn “beachy” in there, but as it started to happen I just went with it.
As you know if you read my post on choosing art for your home, I love Canadian artist Janet Hill. I chose this print of her work The Mermaid Inn for the guest room just for fun. It supports the color scheme and the function of the room. Plus, the turtles are really cute. Are they checking in?
A new light fixture, a pendant with linen drum shade and capiz shells, made a HUGE difference in here. No more Builder’s Favorite nipple light. The old fixture was not only totally functionally inadequate but also hideously ugly. WHY do home builders put those in? I know why. They’re cheap. That’s ok, I can be cheap, too. This fixture, which I found at World Market, is a major design upgrade and cost less than $100. And worth absolutely every penny.
The dresser is IKEA’s Hemnes. I bought tiny night stands from IKEA, too. They do know how to scale pieces down for small spaces. I added the glass top for the dresser and it makes a big difference. It’s easy to clean and makes the piece seem more upscale than it really is. Guests don’t have to worry about leaving make-up or rings from drinks there, either. My mother-in-law commented right away on how much she liked the glass top. That’s a win-win, y’all.
A silly message for our guests and tiered dish to hold jewelry sits on the glass-topped dresser.
This chair was my one splurge in the room. Anyone who knows me knows that I am an unabashed, complete sucker* for chinoiserie chairs. Love them, love them. I don’t know why. I just do. So when I found one in the exact right color at Wisteria, I waited for a coupon and snatched it up. It still pained me a little, what I paid for it, but I love it and it adds so much character to the space. It also adds a place for my father-in-law to sit to take off his shoes, which could have been accomplished less expensively, I’ll grant you, but not nearly so stylishly.
*My former husband used to laugh at me for what he called my “bus station chair”. He was referring to a real, vintage Chinese chippendale chair I bought from a seller on Etsy who sent it to me by Greyhound bus from Florida. He went down to the Greyhound station in Austin and picked it up for me, so it is my “bus station chair”. And I love it. It’s in my office. The heart wants what it wants, y’all. Even if it comes from a bus station.
And that’s the thing about a guest bedroom. You can afford to be a little daring in there. You aren’t spending every day in that room, and it’s the perfect place to go a little bolder than usual. Mix Ikat and Greek key pillows together. Go for it!
So much better than Baby Poop.
Cheers,
Note: This is not a sponsored post. Links provided in this post are purely meant to be helpful.
