You’d like to have a place for guests to sleep, but you need a home office, too. Unfortunately, you’ve only got one spare room. Then, an idea occurs; why can’t you use one place as a guest room and home office? Now, you need to design it, and you’re struggling to find ideas for making the space work. Try some of these Home Office Guest Room Ideas to combine two valuable spaces into one.
1) DIY Rolling Cart
One of the inconveniences of having a home office guest room is that when you have a guest, you need to vacate the office. One way to do so conveniently is to design a rolling cart or bookshelf, so you can move necessary documents and supplies to your own bedroom or another room temporarily. You can use these instructions by Jamison Rantz from Rogue Engineer to build your own cart, and modify it for your specific needs.
2) Sofa Bed
A sofa bed is probably the simplest, easiest, and most attractive way to make your home office into a guest bedroom. The sofa will be comfortable for you to nap or entertain guests in your office, and when you have guests, you can quickly fold it down. You can even use the office during the day and let the guest sleep on the sofa bed at night if you need the office every day. This sofa bed from Walmart makes an excellent addition to an office with a classy faux leather option.
3) Portable Closet
When you convert your home office into a bedroom, you’ll need two new things: a bed and a dresser or closet. Since you aren’t using the closet most of the time, it’d be a waste to have a permanent one in your office. Instead, make a portable closet like the one Glen from DIY Creators makes in this video. A portable or foldable closet is convenient for your guests, and won’t waste space in your office, since you can move it as soon as your guest no longer needs it.
4) Cot
Why do you want a guest bedroom? Are you worried about comfort the most, or privacy? If privacy is your main concern, then all you need is a bed that you can take out of storage and put in your office. This cot from Amazon folds tightly, and while it isn’t the most comfortable bed in the world, it’ll work for a night or two while letting your guests have a private room. This is also one of the cheapest choices for a bed, cot, or couch.
5) Bed and Desk Combination
If you don’t want a cheap, folding bed, but don’t want to sacrifice desk space, you can combine the two in unique ways that take up little room. For example, in this picture, the desk extends over the bed so that you don’t lose bed or desk space. The room owner managed to create a large desk that also functioned as a nightstand and added shelves and cabinets above the bed. By placing the guest’s shelves over the bed, you avoid wasting space, since you probably weren’t going to use the space above the bed every day anyway.
6) DIY Budget Makeover
If you’re short on money, your guest room and home office combination is still achievable. Use some of the tips in this video by ToolBox Divas to find cheap furniture to redo an office. While you’ll be furnishing an office-bedroom combination, the tips in the video should work for you. If you’re not afraid to refinish or repair old furniture or do some very simple do-it-yourself projects, you can get a complete office and guest room for a low cost. Add a do-it-yourself murphy bed or a cot, along with a cheap portable closet, to complete it.
7) Murphy Bed
One of the problems with combining a home office and a guest room is that a bed takes up a lot of room, and you can’t really reuse a bed for your office. This is when it can be useful to have a folding bed, also known as a Murphy bed. Murphy beds fold up into the wall so that they don’t take up any space when not in use. This video shows you how you can install a Murphy bed from a kit, so it looks like a cabinet and takes up only a bit of wall space.
8) Isolate Spaces
They say not to have your desk in your bedroom, but the same can apply to having a bed in your office. Even if you have a folding bed, you don’t want to have guest bedroom items cluttering your office, and you certainly don’t want your guests to have to deal with your office clutter. A divider like this one from Amazon is a great way to separate the two spaces, so you can only see the furniture you want to at a given time.
9) DIY Murphy Bed
Murphy beds, or folding beds, are a great way to limit the home office floor space you use with the guest bed since you probably won’t be using the guest room most of the time. Unfortunately, they can be expensive, so they may seem out of reach if you have a low budget. One way to get a cheap Murphy bed is to build one using a kit and these instructions from Brittany Goldwyn, rather than buying a premade bed.
10) Folding Bed
If a Murphy bed is beyond your budget, you can still get a bed that folds up and takes up little room when not in use. Try getting a folding bed like this one from Amazon. It’s only a single bed, so it might not be as comfortable as a large Murphy bed or full-sized bed, but it’s by far the cheaper option for a fold-up guest room bed. Since it comes on wheels, you can even remove it from the room entirely when you don’t want it there.
11) Centered Around the Bed
A bed is probably the biggest piece of furniture in either a bedroom or bedroom-office combination, so you may have to design your office around the guest bed. If you have a small space to work with, it can be challenging to figure out where to put office furniture. This article gives some advice on how to position a desk in a small bedroom. While you’ll have to see if each suggestion matches your needs, this is a good start for placing each furniture piece around the bed.
12) DIY Loft Bed
If you want a fun, creative way to combine an office with living space, try a loft bed like the one in this video by Get Hands Dirty. While the introduction to the video is poetic, you can skip further ahead to learn the details of how this woman made a loft bed that can have a desk underneath. You can build your desk into the loft bed frame and essentially create a small office under the bed. The great thing about this is that the bed takes up virtually no floor space.
13) Separate Spaces
Your office and bedroom should be separate to help you focus on work while you’re working and to let your guests relax while they’re in the room. One way to do this is to assign purposes to each part of the room and keep areas tidy when they’re not in use. For example, you can copy the room in this picture by having a desk in one corner, bed in another, and TV in another. If you have a TV, you probably want to see it from both the work area and the bed, as you can in the picture.
14) Shelf Desk
If you use a laptop for most of your computer work, you can more easily switch your office over to a guest room, since you can just take the laptop to a different room. This shelf unit from Amazon makes it even easier to do so since you can set it up as a laptop desk and then move the computer when you need to use the guest room. With the computer gone, the shelf becomes a convenient place for your guest to store clothes and belongings.
15) Nook
If you want your home office to be separated from the guest room space, try making an office nook. This keeps the guest room bed and furnishings from encroaching on your workspace and keeps you focused on work. One way to do this is to furnish a small dedicated area like Beau from Probably This did in this article. You can also turn a closet into a nook by opening double doors and making a miniature room inside your guest room.
16) USB Charging Lamps
Your guest will want a place to charge their phone while visiting, and it can be convenient to have an office cell phone charging station that isn’t attached to your laptop and doesn’t use up one of your outlets. This makes a lamp with a USB charging station great for a combination office/bedroom. Lamps are also multi-use, as you can move the lamps from your desk to a nightstand, or have one lamp on each. This way, you have a desk lamp for detail work, and they have dimmer lighting for late-night reading before bed.
17) Dimmable Bulbs
One inherent problem with a guest room and office combination is that offices should have brighter light that you can see to work by, while bedrooms need dimmer, softer light to help them get ready to fall asleep or relax while reading a book. One way to compromise between these two needs is to get dimmable lights with dimmable bulbs like these from Amazon. With a dimmer switch, you always have the right amount of light for your needs.
Did any of these ideas seem right for you? Everybody has unique office guest room needs, and we’d love to hear about yours! Please let us know in the comments below.
