29th Jul 2019
Empty Nesters: Here’s How to Transform Your Child’s Bedroom into a Guest Room
So, your kids are all grown up into young adults and they have moved into their own places? We understand this can be an emotional time. As an empty nester, you are faced with a decision about what to do with the extra rooms that were once occupied by your kids. This can be a difficult process, but it can also represent a fresh start for your home decor. Now you have the opportunity to transform your extra rooms into guest rooms that will be comfortable and practical for guests (including your kids) to stay in when they visit. Here are our top recommendations to consider when transforming a room in your house into a guest room.
- Save meaningful personal mementos: Before you begin creating the guest room of your dreams, tell your adult children your plans to convert their childhood bedroom into a guest bedroom. Invite them over and have them take any mementos or souvenirs from their former bedrooms that they wish to keep. Planning and communicating your plans ahead of time can reduce the potential for hurt feelings when someone hears their childhood room is being redesigned.
- Design with comfort in mind: Since the bedroom furniture in your child’s bedroom may be worn and outdated, it’s a good idea to invest in new bedroom furniture for your guest bedroom. You can give your guests a luxury hotel experience without breaking the bank. We recommend first investing in comfortable bedding to ensure your guests have a good night’s sleep. DOWNLITE designs luxury bedding products including comforters, pillows, mattress pads, blankets, throws, and more, and offers them to you without the luxury markup. If your parents will be visiting often, you might want to consider bedding that is best for seniors. By updating your guest bedding with new high-thread-count and hypoallergenic bedding, you’ll create a pleasant sleeping experience for your guests that they will appreciate.
- Redesign and upgrade the space: If you have additional energy & budget, we recommend adding a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Lavender, soft blues, greens or grays tend to be the most soothing colors, which are ideal for serene sleeping environments. Upgrading bedroom furniture to include practical items like a desk or reading chair, updating the lighting style to something more your current style, or upgrading the closet to adjust shelving, are all tactics that can be helpful for appealing to a wide variety of visiting guests. You can also make the space more useful by turning it into a multi-use space such as an office, green room or reading room.
- Add practical enhancements: Adding a lock to the door, a ceiling fan with a light dimmer, an ironing board and a night light are all practical additions you can add to make your guests feel comfortable and secure during any time of the night. Updating to windows that can open but retain safety from external elements may be expensive in the short run but new windows can greatly increase efficiency of heating and cooling in the long run, so it might be financially more responsible if you plan to stay in the home for awhile; plus, it helps the environment! Adding blackout curtains to allow people to sleep in is also a particularly thoughtful and useful enhancement.
- Delight with extra thoughtful comforts for your guests: Consider adding the following to give your guests an extra comfortable stay: decorative tissue boxes, air fresheners, hair dryer, floral arrangements, linen sprays and a basket of toiletries including toothbrushes, toothpaste, and milled soaps. These extra touches will be appreciated by your guests.
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