The Suite Life: Top Interior Designers Reveal Guest Room Must-Haves
Designers share the secrets to crafting welcoming and remarkable guest rooms
With distinctive color palettes, scenic wall coverings, sumptuous bedding, and thoughtful accoutrement, artfully designed guest rooms provide overnight visitors with a memorable sanctuary that is both restful and resounding. Routinely capturing both a sense of place and the personality of the hosts, these uniquely crafted spaces allow for unbridled expression.
“It should just be a fun experience to stay in someone’s guest room,” says designer Victoria Hagan, who suggests playing with pattern and color or the juxtaposition of scale to enliven the interior, as she did in a Southampton, New York, home where a soaring ceiling allows for a stately four-poster bed that contrasts with vibrant red walls. “There should be a touch of fantasy.”
Whether it’s a guest suite in a primary residence or a vacation retreat orchestrated to welcome a mix of family and friends, designers find a multitude of ways to conjure a transportive atmosphere.
Sleep Easy
“The most important thing is the bed,” declares Stewart Manger, noting that there’s an art to selecting the right combination of high-quality linens, accent pillows, a throw for an afternoon nap, and a coverlet. “I find the weight of it is actually better year-round,” he says of his preference for the latter over a duvet. “Clients struggle with how to put together their bed, but when you’ve got the right formula, it’s actually very easy.”
While most outfit a bedroom with one bed, Paris designer Laura Gonzalez, whose boldly layered aesthetic transforms homes and hotels, made adaptations when a room initially intended for children was reinterpreted as guest quarters with two. “It’s not very often that I receive an assignment for a guest room with two separate beds,” she says. “It depends a lot on personal convictions and the environment in which a client lives.”
Beyond a snug spot for sleeping, guest rooms should also offer a place to lay out clothing, read, or respond to emails. “I don’t think I do a guest room now that doesn’t have a desk, because it seems everyone needs to catch up on a little bit of work,” states Hagan.
Of vital importance, explains Manger, are bedside tables with a drawer for jewelry or watches and a lower shelf for books. “All of these little things make the guests feel much more comfortable,” he says.
Set the Scene
Historically, bedrooms featured scenic wall coverings to conjure immersive environs both eye-catching and unique. “Guest rooms are definitely one of my favorite rooms to do—you can take more risks,” says Rayman Boozer, whose joyful spaces also utilize linens in saturated shades.
Such was the case for Robert Couturier, whose client turned one of his extra rooms into an art installation, while another, in Water Mill, New York, enveloped hers in a statement-making de Gournay wallpaper. “She goes in there to watch television; it’s an extension of her bedroom,” Couturier says. “I think that the point in all these people’s houses is to not make it look like a hotel.”
Some select designs according to who will utilize the room the most—like Boozer’s client who requested a more traditional interior in her otherwise contemporary home to appeal to visiting parents. Others, explains Gonzalez, find it better to keep the room more broadly focused. “Guest bedrooms, in my experience, are always less expressive in terms of aesthetics, as the room is intended for different types of people,” she says.
Small Touches
Although the guest room should have more personality than a hotel suite, those concierge-like details are valuable additions—phone chargers, notepads, and most vital, the code to the Wi-Fi. “I always love a touch of fresh flowers by the bed,” says Hagan, who also favors embroidered linens, such as those from Pratesi, to add character.
“I like to add a coffeemaker so you don’t have to disturb your host if you wake up at a different time,” suggests Boozer, who advocates for curated shelves or collections of art that give guests insight into the homeowner. “Especially for guests that are not family, it’s a way of showing what your personality is and the things that you value.”
“I love to include as many objects from the client’s trips as possible,” adds Gonzalez. “The guests are traveling, so through the room, I tend to give them an extended feeling of vacation.”
Fundamentally, welcoming overnight visitors is simply a different kind of entertaining. “It’s not the dinner party, but it is the sleepover,” says Hagan. However, notes Manger, the challenge is that with a suite done too well “guests are going to move in and never want to move out.”
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Summer Issue under the headline “Rest Assured.” Subscribe to the magazine.
The Suite Life: Top Interior Designers Reveal Guest Room Must-Haves
