My Pink and White Spare Bedroom Makeover

by Charlotte
(Yorkshire, UK)

It's now neat and tidy!

We seemed to spend most of our recent time off sorting and making over our spare bedroom into a room that we, and any guests, can actually make use of!

Up until now the room has kind of been used as a bit of a dumping ground - for storage. Recently it has got so bad that that was all it had become. We couldn?t use the room when people wanted to stay, or use it for any of our hobbies. What a waste!!

We made a list of all the roles the room needed to serve.

It needs to be a storage room. We have a small house so the bulk of the items not in everyday use, but that need to be accessible, should go in the spare room. This includes spare bed linen and all our art and craft equipment.

It also needs to be a guest room. We occasionally have guests to stay, and now we are in our 30?s it is nice to be able to offer them a bit more that just a square on the lounge floor on an airbed. This meant a bed or sofa bed was a must.

The room also needs to be a hobby room. There should be space to store our art and craft items, and room for a desk so that craft projects can be undertaken away from meals on the kitchen table, my everyday, work-at-home environment, and the dog?s big waggy tail!

We drew a layout plan, and decided what we could fit in. We already have quite a bit of storage in there, but we needed more, so invested in a huge bookcase that slid into a spare corner and could hold plenty of bits and pieces.

We looked into different kinds of sofa beds, but in the end actually decided on a 'small double' bed. This is a 4ft wide bed (rather than the usual 4ft 6) so fitted in a bit easier. It also means that we don't need to find an extra spot to store bed linen, and have a lot of extra storage space under the bed itself. (We also bought some plastic underbed storage boxes).

Of course, the room looks a lot better with a double bed in - like a 'proper' bedroom! And it doesn't take up nearly as much space as we had thought.

We also added a desk - carefully measuring the width to make sure we could sit at it comfortably! The chair slides right under the desk. The desk is on castors, so that it can be wheeled into a corner when guests come, where it can double as a dressing table, or suitcase stand.

We had already previously painted the back wall of the spare room pink, and the other walls a bright white, to bounce light around the room, and make the room feel larger. We added some fairy lights in pink, for a relaxed feel. We also added some Chinese hangings in bright colors and chose matching bedlinen.

Now our spare room is no longer an embarrassment! We can have guests to stay, use it for storage, arts, crafts and hobbies and it doesn't seem to have turned into another dumping ground (so far, at least!)

We were so pleased with the results we 'treated' ourselves to a night in the spare room, and I have to say, I'm very happy with how it's turned out!