Gordon JamesHaving a room in your home that doesn’t get a lot of use isn’t an ideal situation; when you moved into your home, you may have mused about turning it into an office or a home gym, but all these years later, the most use your spare room gets is the occasional night guest staying over after some merriment.
With the infrequent use of your spare room, you may also notice that the décor in your spare room hasn’t kept up with the rest of your home. As we don’t often use spare rooms, they aren’t always at the forefront of our minds when decorating.
So, it’s probably time to update the look of your spare bedroom; a fresh look will make you more likely to spend time in your spare room. Read on for some advice on decorating your spare room in a way that will encourage you to spend more time there.
Use Simple, Yet Welcoming Colours
If you’re still going to use your spare room as a guest bedroom from time to time, you should try to keep the colors in your spare room toned down yet still welcoming. Not everyone will enjoy sleeping in a neon green bedroom or a bright pink room. So when painting your spare room, you should opt for a muted yet friendly color.
Good colours to use to decorate your spare room would be neutral colors like off-whites, beiges, creams, and toned-down colors like baby blue. These colors will all be welcoming without being too stimulating, meaning that you can give your spare room a new look and keep it a welcoming guest room.
Get Extra Utility, With Multi-Use Décor Items
If you’re using your spare room as a guest room, you’ll have a tough balance to strike. On the one hand, you’ll want the room to be cozy and dark for night guests but also warm and bright for when you do other activities in the room. Well, it takes a planning genius to make a room both dark and bright, so you’ll need to invest in some multi-use items to make it work.
For lighting, you should look at double layer roller blinds that have a dimout and a blackout layer, meaning you can keep the room light during the day and dark at night. Other multi-use pieces should be considered, like sofa beds or multipurpose storage. All of this will allow your spare room to serve your daytime needs as well as your guest’s night-time needs.
Free Up Floor Space, To Encourage Use
Spare rooms are often on the smaller side, at least compared to the other rooms in your home, which means that if you want to use the room for more than the occasional night guest, you’ll want to work hard to keep free space for you to use for other activities.
So, look at ways you can cut down on the use of your floor space; you have a few options like swapping your guest bed out for a sofa bed, which will open up some floor space and give you the added function of the sofa; or ditching standing wardrobes for wall mounted storage, is another easy way to open up some floor space.
Give Yourself A Reason To Use The Room
Now all of this is all well and good, as long as you actually have a reason to use your spare room. So when decorating, you should give yourself a reason to use the room more often, there are lots of ways you can do this, but it is best to look at activities you struggle to enjoy in your home’s communal areas.
Maybe you want to watch the football, but your children are remote hogs, in which case adding a TV to your spare room can create a space to watch sports; or if you have a hobby that can get messy like painting, you can confine your mess to one room by using the spare room as an art room.
Gordon James
