Redesign Your Guest Bedroom To Accommodate a Home Office

Most people don’t have a spare room that they can dedicate as a home office, and remodeling or adding on to your existing home may be too expensive to be affordable. However, there are some areas in your home that may give you the opportunity to design a small but homey work-from-home space if you never see clients at your home.

Some of the rooms that are pulling double duty in self- or remotely-employed households include:

• Partially finished basements
• Dining areas or breakfast nooks
• Closed in porch, deck, or balcony
• Master or guest bedrooms
• Living rooms and foyers

Of all of these options, a guest bedroom is perhaps the least inconvenient for everyone. You can create a work area that can easily be moved or put away when you have guests staying over in your home. If you don’t have overnight company often, the guest bedroom gives you a place you normally won’t have to worry about being in anyone’s way or finding privacy to concentrate on work.

The first thing you will need to do is eliminate any unnecessary furniture. You should leave at least one nightstand with a shelf and/or drawer, as well as a bedside lamp for the top of the nightstand. If you do not have a closet for the guest to use, you should also keep a chest of drawers or dressers in the room. If you choose a media center designed for the bedroom, it will be low enough to utilize as a desk. Note that you may need to get a chair with taller than average chairs, such as bar-style seating.

Along those same lines, your work is cut out for you, plain to see. You want to have as few pieces of furniture in the room as possible, but you also need those few items to really pull their weight, meeting several purposes at the same time. Another good example of this is a loveseat. 

Having a loveseat in the bedroom with a pull-out bed further decreases furnishings while still accommodating a guest when necessary. You can buy them on 1StopBedrooms and other online furniture retailers.

Place a coffee table in front of the loveseat to provide a surface for presentations or tea and coffee service. The nightstand(s) you chose to keep would be placed on either side of the loveseat. You will also need a place to stow away the coffee table when not in use and make sure you have enough space in the room for the bed to pull out fully.

Finally, designing the perfect floating workstation is the most effective way to turn any room in your home into an office. If there is a chance you could need to work in any room in the home, a mobile office might be the best option. Use a computer desk on casters that have shelves and drawers for everything you might need while you are working.