Guest Bedroom Furniture Layout

Our guest bedroom would be considered large by most standards.  It is 15’10″ long by 10’10″ wide.  Should be no problem to fit whatever furniture we want in such a large space, right?

Unfortunately, wrong!  Size is certainly not an issue in the room, but there are several other obstacles that are difficult to work around.  The room has three doors; a door to the room, a door to the closet, and a door to the ensuite bathroom.  The doors are on 2 of the four walls.  On another wall, there are two nice tall windows.  They are not centered.  Here is a drawing of the room floor plan (not to scale) to show what I mean.

Our instinct when we moved in was to put the bed on the long wall opposite the windows, between the door to the room and the door to the bathroom.  We thought this would take advantage of the view (the windows) and keep the room balanced with the bed directly center.

The challenge with this layout is it limited other options for the room.  We could only fit really small nightstands on either side of the bed.  We actually had some makeshift ones in there, because we could not find anything to fit.  We added a small desk in the corner and a couple cubes to act as a bench on the other side of the room.  The bed in the middle sort of chopped all the floor space in half.  With this layout there was not much room for any other furniture.  Kind of sad for such a large room.

I had been toying with moving things around for a long time.  I wanted to make the room feel more spacious.  I wanted to have a seating area and just make it a more comfortable space for guests.  After thinking through lots of options, I finally settled on moving the bed and reorienting the whole room.

I resisted this new layout for a long time, because I prefer two matching nightstands on either side of the bed.  There really was no way to accommodate two decent size nightstands in this space with our 4-poster bed.  So, I gave in to the idea that one nightstand would be enough.  Then, I found my little red cabinet and knew it was meant to be.

The new layout is much more spacious.  With the bed moved to the far wall, there is so much more open space when you walk into the room.  It used to feel like you were walking right into the bed.  It is also nice to have the bed as a focal point when you walk into the room.  The desk moved to the small wall by the closet.  The extra space on the other end of the room is going to allow us to put a chaise lounge in the corner by the closet.  We have one in our room that we plan to move in here for guests.

Sacrificing my vision for a pair of nightstands is a small price to pay for the benefits of fitting a few more furniture pieces in the room and improving the layout.  Now there is space for the little red cabinet, a chaise lounge, and a small end table with plenty of floor space to spare.  We are working to get everything moved around and finish up the room.  I will be back with the reveal soon.