The guest room

10/23/2026

A room used three times a year

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In many houses the guest room is the quietest: it opens for the holidays, a summer weekend, an emergency, and then closes again. Meanwhile it fills with everything that has no place, from suitcases to moving boxes left for years.

A room used so rarely costs space, heating and cleaning to stay empty almost all the time. Designing it well means making it work in two different ways: welcoming for whoever sleeps there, useful for whoever lives in the house every other day.

The bed that disappears

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The choice of bed decides everything else. A fixed double bed takes over the room even when no one uses it; a good sofa bed, with a real mattress and a mechanism that opens in one movement, gives back the space for eleven months of the year.

Today's sofa beds have mattresses up to 18 centimetres deep and slatted bases, far from the old folding camp beds. Alternatively, a single bed with a pull-out second bed sleeps two people and by day becomes a deep seat, perfect for reading.

What a guest needs

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Anyone sleeping in a house that is not their own looks for a few things, and looks for them in the dark. A bedside light that switches on without getting up, a socket near the bed for the phone, somewhere to rest an open suitcase without putting it on the floor.

The less visible details count too: curtains that really block the light, a few free hangers in a cleared wardrobe, an empty drawer, an extra blanket folded in sight. They cost nothing and make a guest feel expected, rather than simply accommodated.

The rest of the year

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When the guests leave, the room can become something else again: a study, a hobby room, the place to dry and iron clothes, the wardrobe for the season at rest. The design only has to allow for it from the start, with a generous wardrobe, a desk that does not crowd the space and a bed that folds away.

A room designed for two uses works far harder than a room designed for one, and stops being the biggest storeroom in the house.

In our showroom

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In our showroom we test sofa beds and pull-out beds by opening and closing them, because the mechanism and the mattress can only be judged that way. We then work out how the same room can serve both the person staying one night and the one who uses it every day.

Read more: How do you choose the perfect sofa bed for your interior and the beds by Milano Bedding for a guest room that changes function in one movement.