Ten Essentials for a Guest Room Retreat

Living outside of New York City and being several states away from our extended family means that our guest room stays pretty busy! One of the things that sold us on our house was that we have a nice private guest room with its own bathroom. Many years ago it was actually a separate structure from the house that was used as a doctor’s office but somewhere in our home’s 60+ year history an addition was put on to connect it to the rest of our house so it could be used as a fourth bedroom. Our guest room has come a long way since moving in (you can see some of the lovely “before” pictures {here}) and has seen a lot of guests! So I thought it’s be fun to share some of the things I’ve added to our room that help make it a special little retreat for our visitors! (there’s a full source list at the end of the post if you have questions about where anything is from and I’ll also link up some sources as I share my guest room essentials!) Post includes some affiliate links – see my full disclosure statement {here}

A Simple Luggage Rack

A lot of guests actually prefer to live out of their suitcases while visiting rather than putting their clothes away in drawers so it’s helpful to have a luggage rack or two handy so they don’t have to be keep their suitcases on the floor and constantly be crouching down to get things.

My luggage rack is {this one} from Ballard Designs. These three also look nice:

A Spot for Hanging Clothes

You know how I mentioned that our guest room actually used to be a doctor’s office (so strange..)? Unfortunately that resulted in there being no guest room closet. I think it’s important to have a spot for guests to hang their clothes so I took an old TV armoire that my neighbor was getting rid of and painted it and modified the inside for hanging clothes. It was a super inexpensive solution that works great in our room. If you don’t have a closet but also have no room for an armoire, a narrow freestanding rack like {this one} can do the trick.

And of course nice hangers are bonus! I personalized inexpensive wood hangers (the simple tutorial is {here}) and tied some ribbon on them to make ours a little special:

Bedside Lamps

It you have the room, it’s so nice to have lamps on both sides of the bed for your guests. If you’re super tight on space, you can consider wall-mounted fixtures like the ones we put in our master bedroom.

Books & Magazines

I like to keep some magazines and favorite books in our guest room because I swear, it never fails that when I’m someone else’s guest, I forget my book (which I hate because I read every night!). I keep our extra books in one of our nightstands:

And even though most people rely on their cell phones for the time, every guest room should also have a clock. We have {this brass one} in our guest room.

Tissues & TP

Now we’re getting to the really important stuff! Tissues and TP – it doesn’t get more essential than that! Seriously, you don’t want your poor guests to run out of tissues and TP and not know where to find more so I make sure our guest room is stocked up. And I kinda hate the look of tissue boxes so I either use a tissue box cover (this monogrammed linen one is from {here}) or store tissues in a decorative box.

Easy Access for Charging Electronics

Everyone travels with their phones, laptops, and other electronic devices so be sure there’s an easily accessible spot for charging. We converted one of our guest room outlets to a combined outlet/double USB port (outlet found {here}) so the only thing guests need to charge their phones is a cord. I keep meaning to add one of these to our bedroom too – they’re great!

Extra Blankets & Throws

Everyone has a different comfort zone when it comes to temperature so extra blankets and throws are a must. I store ours in the base of our clothes armoire but if you don’t have any kind of enclosed space to store yours, you can just throw them in a large basket like {this one} we’ve used in our master bedroom:

Toiletries & New Soap

It’s nice to keep a little bin or basket of toiletries somewhere in your guest room in case your visitors forget to pack theirs. And this might be my own little personal oddity but I think there should be either liquid soap or fresh bars of soap for the shower. Am I the only one who gets kinda grossed out by showering with a used bar of soap when you don’t know who was using it before you?? Yep, I know soap’s kinda inherently clean but still… just leave some new bars out for weirdos like me, okay?!

A Spot to Sit

It’s great to have a chair or even a loveseat in your guest room for your guests to sit and relax on and also as a place to throw the decorative pillows on the bed when they go to sleep. Our guest room has this little nook that was the perfect size for the love seat we had in the living room of our old house that we couldn’t find any other home for in our new one. If you don’t have the space for a loveseat or chair, a small pouf or a camp stool can do the trick too!

Wifi Password & Area Info

And the most important?? The almighty wifi password! Write down both the name of your wifi network and the password so your guests can easily access it when visiting. I also think it’s really nice to have some info in your guest room about things available to do in your area (especially if you live near a touristy city like we do!). I just recently took a bare wall in our guest room and did a simple DIY upgrade of standard office clipboards to create a clipboard wall that holds all sorts of info about things to do in the area – I love how it turned out!

I’m sharing the simple step-by-step tutorial of my clipboard wall art along with a link where you can download a free copy of the wifi password printable that I created over on Life Storage’s blog. Even though I made mine for our guest room, there are so many other rooms that this would work great in too! You could hang these decorated clipboards in the kitchen as a spot for your favorite recipes and meal plans, in your office for your to-do lists, or in your family room as a fun spot to display and easily change out your child’s art!

That wraps up my list of guest room essentials! Is there anything else that you guys think should be added to the list? I hope that you all enjoy your weekend!!