We finally got around to our small guest room redo several months ago. Who wants to be our guest? Now, with working from home a lot over these last few months, I was motivated to rearrange things again and set up a home office space. And it was far beyond time for new paint! Now, we have the perfect multipurpose guest room with light walls and a navy blue painted ceiling. It is a home office guest room combo which also serves as a plant room in the winter.
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This room. The guest room has been my second least favorite room in the house since we moved in. For one thing, the room is tiny. Our home was a custom-built home by the previous owners, and they had designed the room to be a downstairs office rather than a bedroom. However, the room does have a closet and therefore qualifies as a bedroom for appraisal standards. Given that we have some out-of-town family members who have trouble getting up and down stairs, we needed the room to be our downstairs guest room.
Warm Putty Walls and a Navy Blue Painted Ceiling
As you can see from the before pictures, the entire room was originally a navy blue color.
I actually liked the color, but the paint was in poor shape from when the original owners moved out and removed their artwork, etc. We’ve just been dealing with it.
I don’t know the exact color of the navy blue paint since no paint cans had been left behind. But I would say it is a very similar color to Benjamin Moore’s New York State of Mind.
We decided we wanted a much lighter color to give the room a larger feel. I love how airy the room feels now with the Valspar Warm Putty we picked out for the walls! It is a light beige.
It was not our intention to leave the ceiling blue. But the Hubs painted the walls first, and we decided we liked the two-toned contrast. I figure if we ever tire of it, we can always paint the ceiling with the same Warm Putty color we just painted the four walls. Yes, we are some of those people whose ceiling is the same color – or slightly lighter – than the walls. That is just how the house was when we moved in and we stuck with that system. Plus, I do love a blue painted ceiling!
The Bed in Office Situation
Again, the room is super tiny since it was supposed to be an office. The wall that makes the most sense for hosting a bed is about two inches shy of being able to feature a bed that doesn’t bump into the closet door frame. The way we had the guest bed situated the past four years has not been the best use of the space – we have since come to realize.
Once the paint was dry, we moved the queen bed into two new positions and finally left it to where we were left with the most usable space. Another thing we did that made a big difference was removing my beloved metal headboard. We had removed the foot board four years ago when we first moved in to save some space. But the headboard was still taking up about a foot of space between the wall and the bed. It made my heart sad to let it go, but a foot of space is A LOT of real estate in a tiny room like this.
In fact, I didn’t really realize just how bad the placement of the bed was until we moved it out and rearranged a few weeks ago. Wow! How much bigger the room feels with just those simple changes of the bed! Between that and the new lighter color on the walls, the room feels like a completely different space.
At some point, we might consider swapping this queen sized bed for an office daybed or a guest room sofa bed. I think I’ve even seen a bed that turns into a desk. But for now, we will make due with what we have.
Styling our Home Office Guest Room Combo
As for the decor for this office guest room, I shopped the house for most of the items. In fact, I used a lot of what was already in the room from before. But it looks so much different with the new paint! The aqua curtains were already hanging in this room since I bought them last spring. They are clearance curtains from Target.
I prefer the bedding in a multipurpose guest room to be simple. In fact, I prefer the bedding to be simple in any small bedroom. The double-sided quilt on the bed is a few years old from Target. The orange quilt layered on the end of the bed is one I bought from At Home. I absolutely love the look of orange, light aqua, and deep blue together. It is such a feast for the eyes!
Note that this first picture is zoomed out a bit on my iPhone so you can see more details of the room. The room is truly so small that it is hard to photograph.
Now, we did get a new ceiling fan, and I think it also made a world of difference! The old one was built with the house – close to 20 years ago and really dated the room. I love this new modern fan from Lowe’s. In Arkansas, we are ceiling fan folks!
The tribal rug is from Home Goods. It is super soft and vacuums well. Repositioning the rug so that more of the pattern shows made it feel like a brand new rug in the room. I found another tribal pattern rug in orange and blue. And if I were to update the rug in this room eventually, I would strongly consider this colorful Aztec rug. I love a good tribal pattern!
Since I lost my fabulous headboard, I searched for something to hang above the bed. We originally thought about putting a new narrow headboard behind the bed. But after realizing we would still lose some inches of space, I decided to simply find a large statement piece to hang on the wall above the bed. I stumbled upon this large tobacco basket on clearance at my local Nadeau one day recently before it went out of business. You can find a similar large tobacco basket and style it in many different ways. A lot of people style theirs in a farmhouse style, but it doesn’t have to go that direction.
The small pillow was made by my mom with one of the mola artworks I purchased in Panama (where my mom is from) from the indigenous Kuna tribe. I try to incorporate Panamanian cultural items throughout every room of my home.
The side table is kept simple with two plants in blue pots to mirror the blue from the ceiling. The plant on top rests atop a handmade trivet from Kenya. The small side table belonged to my grandmother. It is one of the only pieces I have of hers and is from the 1950s.
The Be Our Guest sign just finishes the room. I have been eyeing a Be Our Guest sign for quite a while, but when I saw this one, I knew it was the one! The three Be Our Guest words arrived raw with no paint. The Hubs used a hammered copper spray paint on them.
Considerations for a Multipurpose Guest Room
With a home office guest room combo as teeny tiny as this one, we had to make some decisions. We need to incorporate only what is important enough to belong in the room for both work and for hosting guests. If this room was solely a home office, I likely would have shoved 10 times the office supplies and such into various storage bins and baskets around the room. I might have added a large bookcase with displays of my collections and so forth. Having a multipurpose guest room office forced me to house only the items needed.
And if it were only a guest room, I would have likely put in a comfy bench or a bookcase with a fun display. But we had to make concessions to get the most of this multi-purpose room. A couple of woven sea grass baskets stay on the floor to the left of the desk. These baskets hold my planners, food photography and food styling books, etc. The drawers of the desk hold a simple assortment of pens, pencils, notepads, and Post-Its. On the inside of the closet door, hangs a 24-pocket shoe organizer which houses general office supplies.
The “desk” is actually a cane console table. Because I wanted this to be kind of a dual-purpose piece, I decided a console table would work for us. When we need to use this room as a home office, we can pull the chair up, snuggle under a cozy woven throw blanket, and work away.
The Mexican tree bark painting is a thrift store find. It is authentic in a weathered vintage frame which I wouldn’t dare trade for a new one.
When we have guests coming, we can move the chair back into the corner for seating, leaving the table as a simple console. Maybe I will pop some poufs under the open frame. We also can place towels on the chair and a basket of waters on the table to lean the room into more of a guest room direction.
The orange coat tree is from Urban Outfitters. I brought it from my last house, and I love it so much! Everyone that comes over comments on it, and several people begged me to sell it to them at our recent garage sale (even though it wasn’t for sale…it was only outside for displaying sale items.) Urban stopped carrying this coat tree years ago, but I did find a similar orange metal coat tree to link here. It also comes in a pretty pink! Unless guests are coming, I use it to hang plants. This room has incredible afternoon light so some of my plants love it there. As I mentioned, this room also serves as plant room. However, the coat tree is a dual-purpose piece as it can also hold the coats, purses, clothing of guests. When guests come, I move some of the plants out.
So you get the idea. Our small bedroom office combo ideas include dual-purpose furnishings and a minimum of office supplies and decor.
Maybe I’ll reward myself for all of my online learning work and take a nap every afternoon with this whole “bed in office” situation. Works for me!
And that’s it! Be sure to visit some of my other posts: front porch spring ideas, turquoise and white kitchen table, and my friend’s amazing modern farmhouse style!
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