Love working from home? Then you should definitely make that extra room in your apartment or home in an office. It’s going to increase your productivity and help you keep work where it should be: out of your personal life.
But if you aren’t a fan of working from home because your work is two minutes away (lucky you!), and you always have guests over, then that extra room in your home may be destined to become a guest room.
Wondering how to turn an empty space into a vibrant one? Let’s get into the details.
6 Steps to Turn an Unused Room into an Office or Guest Room
Thinking about finally turning that empty space in your home into a useful one? Let’s look at six steps to make that a reality.
1. Think About Your Needs
Before you start working on your new project, sit down and think about what you want. If you’re aiming to create a home office, what are your priorities?
What do you want to achieve? Do you want your office to be somewhere where you work for a few hours? Or do you want it to be your full-time work area? Finding what you want from the space you’re renovating is essential if you want to get it right on the first try.
For instance, if you want your new home office to be your always-office, you should note down everything you need to make that happen, such as soothing wall paint, a comfortable chair, a desk, a storage area, and equipment that makes your work happen.
Similarly, if you decide to convert your new area into a guest room, think about what you’ll need for potential guests. You could imagine yourself in their place. What would you like when you go to stay at someone’s home?
Note down everything you’d want when you find yourself staying at another person’s home. This can include a new bed, a mattress, storage, a bathroom, and other essentials.
2. Choose a Theme
Once you determine what you want to do with your empty area, you should work on choosing what kind of theme you’re going to create. Are you looking for modern and minimalistic items in your office to limit distractions? Or do you want to bring some of that Texas shine to it?
What do you want your guest room to look like? Are you going to make it hotel-like? Or do you want to personalize it with your choices? These are things you should always think about. They can help you pre-determine your paint, furniture, and design choices, which makes the next step easy.
3. Decide on the Furniture
Once you know what kind of theme you’re going to create in your new space, it’s time to settle on furniture. Wondering why you have to do it so soon?
It’s because furniture can take time for you to select and arrive. Plus, by already knowing the kind of furniture you’ll get, you’ll be able to match other elements of the space with it. So, take a trip to IKEA and begin looking through the pieces you need.
If you don’t find anything, hunting online can yield the greatest finds and discounts, especially if you’re renovating during holiday time.
4. Add Storage
Storage is essential for guest rooms and offices, no matter how much you think it won’t be used.
In the office, you need to store paper files — it doesn’t matter if you’re a digital creator — and equipment that you don’t want wandering about, such as camera lenses, microphones, etc. Similarly, your guest might need space to store their things in your guest room, such as their clothes, shoes, and toiletries.
You can start your storage plans by visiting IKEA (again) or looking online. If you already have storage in place in your empty room, you can happily skip this step — happily because creating storage space isn’t cheap.
5. Bring the Room to Life with Accents
Now that you’ve settled on the theme, the furniture, the cabinetry, and everything else, think about items that’ll give your new room life, such as a rug, wall details, an accent chair, a mirror, a potted plant, or even a fake flower jar! You can go with whatever catches your fancy.
However, your choice should complement your room. For example, if you have a smaller room you’re turning into an office, putting a mirror on a wall will make it look larger. Similarly, you could add a tapestry in your guest room to create interest.
6. Use the Right Light Fixtures
Once you’ve hammered out all the small details and the things that make your room pop, you should focus on the light fixtures. Light makes the difference between shabby and gorgeous rooms.
You could try recessed, pendant, LED strip, task, or any other type of lighting to illuminate essential areas and accents. For instance, you should always add a pendant light or task light above your office table. It’ll help you see what you’re doing.
Similarly, a guest room should also have a task light above the headboard. That’ll act as the primary light in the room. If you don’t want that, you could always go for a false ceiling with LED strips or bright task lights shedding soothing light.
The Takeaway
Renovating a room can be challenging, but you can make the process easier if you break it down into several steps and tackle each step one by one. If thinking about that gives you the shivers, you could use the steps above as a guide and begin planning your new room.
You have to follow every step as is — you can shuffle some — but try to begin with the first two and end with the last. That order, in our opinion, gives the best results.