Basement Guest Room Makeover

We recently redid our basement guest bedroom! Just in time for our guests that arrive in 2 days!! I wanted to brighten things up, add lots of texture and plenty of lighting since the natural light is at a minimum.

One of my favorite things about this space are the resilient and eco-friendly floors. They make the entire room feel less like a basement! If you are thinking about redoing your floors, I encourage you to take a look at Beautifully Responsible’s website (one of my blog sponsors and a member of the Resilient Floor Covering Institute) for plenty of inspiration and helpful information!

My brother and his wife are coming in from London so that gave me the final push to get our guest room together. We haven’t seen them in almost TWO YEARS so this visit is extra special. I am so so grateful that they are finally able to come visit, spend time with the kids and give real life hugs.

It’s been way too long and their visits always lift my spirits no matter what else is going on.

My goal was to brighten up our entire guest room (which if you see below was pretty dark!) I wanted to make it feel cozy, and not feel like a dark basement. We want our guests to come back 😉 so I’ve added a few extra touches in here too that I’ll share!

Here are a couple BEFORE photos ~

And here’s the AFTER ~

Some of my favorite design & decor elements that we updated:

Refreshed the window treatments: I framed the window with lightweight curtains and a bamboo roman shade (in case our guests do want to make it darker). Hanging the curtains on the sides of the window make the window appear larger too.

Highlighted the window with a bench. The bench adds extra seating and is a convenient place to open up a suitcase! A suitcase stand of some sort is a simple yet significant addition to a guest room.

We painted the entire room (actually the entire basement) with Benjamin Moore’s Chantilly Lace. It’s my favorite white.paint color. It is not too cool, nor too warm (there’s no blue tint and it doesn’t look yellow at all in person). It has worked well in every place I’ve used it over the years; even our basement where we don’t get much natural light at all. Note that some of my photos are pulling different tones from the lamps and candles 🙂

Rearranged furniture. We originally had the bed in front of the window and centered in the room. In any bedroom, the bed is the primary focal point. From a design standpoint, it is usually the first thing you see when you walk in a room and against the main wall. This layout was a bit tricky to work with but moving the bed off to the side opened up the space and allowed more natural light to come in. There are always exceptions to “design rules”.

Another favorite addition was adding some life to the room! Aka the greenery. The fiddle leaf is real and is thriving in the basement (to my surprise). The olive tree is faux but very real looking. Side note, I’m very particular about my faux greenery and florals. I had bought 3 other olive trees and returned them all. This one is a keeper and also the least expensive. I put another one in Danny’s nursery too and just recommended it for my client’s office.

We moved out a couple heavier pieces of furniture and opted for ones that were “lighter” to create an airy feeling. We have 2 open bookshelves now vs a heavy large dark brown dresser that we had before.

Switching things around also allowed for a seating area in the corner with a cozy chair and table.

Guest bedroom tip: I like open shelving for guest rooms so our guests can see and use what is on them (towels, water bottles, notepads, tissues, etc.). They can also feel free to use open space for their own things.

I added a faux cowhide rug to the resilient flooring (which is great for basements!). Again, this was a tricky layout to work with!! The cowhide has such an interesting shape and it pulls everything together nicely.

The flooring is definitely a highlight in our basement guest room so we didn’t want to cover a lot of it up either with a larger rug.

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Guest Room Bedding

I love the clean look of a white comforter on a guest bed. It reminds me of a hotel. Cozy sheets, extra pillows and blankets are nice to have too.

This is a queen size bed and I used a soft bamboo duvet cover and a king size quilt and king size pillows for an extra cozy look.

A phone charger next to bed and empty trays for guests jewelry, etc. are simple things that go a long way!

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I am hopeful that our guest room will get more use soon too. This past year has been hard on us not seeing family as much as we like. Especially with the girls growing up so fast and Danny being 7 months now!! Things are finally looking brighter in our community. Schools are going back full time (yes!!) after Spring Break and many people we know have been able to get the vaccine.

Hope you have had a great start to Spring! It really does feel like the start of a new season this year 🙂

And thank you again to the RFCI and Beautifully Responsible Floors for sponsoring this post, and getting me to finally give this room a refresh!

Sources for Guest Room:

Rattan Bench

Blue and White bedding (under $50!)

My favorite sheets & duvet cover (They are SO sofa & SOD Readers get 40% off with code CESHININGONDESIGN

82″ Olive Tree

Rope Baskets

Adjustable Gold Floor Lamp

Be Our Guest book

Wireless Charger