I'm Gillian, a Scotland based home & lifestyle blogger. Follow along as I navigate this new journey sharing my life from home.
We have a spare room that does three jobs. It’s where I do my hair, a dumping ground for whatever doesn’t have a home yet, and then, a few times a year, it has to convince someone they’re being looked after. That last job is the one I used to get completely wrong.
For years my approach to getting the guest room ready was: hoover, change the sheets, apologise for the ironing board still being in the corner. It did the job. Nobody complained. But there’s a difference between a room that’s fine and a room where someone actually relaxes, and once I worked out what that difference was, it turned out to be cheap to fix.
This isn’t a checklist of forty things to buy. It’s what actually works after a few years of having people to stay, including my sister, who visits with a husband and 2 young children.
Start with the bed, not the extras
Everyone wants to talk about the nice-to-haves first, but the bed is doing most of the work here. If the mattress is the one nobody else in the house wanted, or the duvet’s gone flat in the middle, no amount of styling around it will fix how someone sleeps.
You don’t need to buy a whole new bed. What actually changes things is proper bedding, in a weight that suits the room rather than whatever was on sale. A good all-season duvet and a set of sheets in a decent thread count will outlast three cheaper sets, and it’s the bit guests notice without knowing why. Nobody’s going to say “what lovely thread count,” but they will sleep better and mention that they slept well, which is the version of the compliment that actually matters.
Keep a spare blanket folded at the foot of the bed too. Some people run cold, some people like the weight of an extra layer even in summer, and it means nobody has to ask.
The bathroom is where people notice
You can get the bedroom looking beautiful and then send someone into a bathroom with a half-used bottle of something and a towel that’s gone a bit thin, and that’s when the whole effort falls apart a little.
Fresh towels, obviously. Not the ones that have been through the wash a hundred times and lost their fluff, the good ones you keep separate for this exact purpose. And proper toiletries in the shower, not whatever’s left over. I keep a full-size shampoo and conditioner in there that never gets used day to day, purely so a guest isn’t stood in the shower squeezing the last of a bottle that’s clearly mine.
It sounds like a small thing. It isn’t. Staying somewhere and being handed proper products instead of the dregs is exactly the kind of thing that makes a house feel like it was ready for you, rather than tidied up in a hurry twenty minutes before you arrived.
Two dressing gowns, and a reason for both of them
This is the one thing in the room I’d say people don’t think about, and it’s the one guests mention most.
We keep two matching dressing gowns in the guest room permanently, one for whoever’s staying and one for their other half if there is one. Not folded away in a drawer somewhere, hung on the back of the door so they are clearly for using.
They’re the Egyptian cotton towelling robes from The Towel Shop, a S/M and a M/L, and they’re properly heavy. 450gsm, which if you’re not used to shopping for towels means genuinely substantial, not the thin waffle ones that feel like wearing a tea towel. They’re white, which I was slightly nervous about with children in the house, but they wash and come back looking the same.
The reason I have two rather than one is obvious once you think about it. A single dressing gown on the back of a door for a couple means someone’s left out, and it’s a strange thing to feel like a guest in someone’s house and also be the one without a robe. Two of the same one solves it without anyone having to say anything.
They’re not cheap-looking either, which matters more than it should. A robe that’s thin enough to see through, or one of those synthetic ones that goes a bit static, undoes a lot of the good work the rest of the room’s doing. These feel like the sort of thing you’d get handed at a proper spa, and they cost less than a meal out for two.
The little things that actually get remembered
This is where I’d say the room stops being generically nice and starts being for the person staying in it.
When my sister comes up with her children, I’ll put a packet of nappies in the wardrobe in their size. Her little one’s a proper toot and goes through them fast, and it’s such a small thing to have sorted before she’s even walked in the door. She’s never asked me to do it. I just know roughly what size her daughter’s in at the moment, and it means one less thing she has to think about as soon as she gets in.
It’s not about having every possible thing in the room. It’s about having the one or two things that are actually relevant to the person coming to stay. A water glass and carafe on the nightstand for someone who always complains about waking up thirsty. A phone charger left out, because everyone always forgets theirs. A couple of books if you know they read. It costs nothing and it’s the difference between “that was a nice room” and “she really thought about it.”
What I don’t bother with
I’ll be honest about where I’ve stopped trying, because half the guest room advice out there is more effort than it’s worth.
I don’t do a welcome basket with snacks in it. Nobody’s ever mentioned missing one, and it always felt like something people were doing for the photo rather than for the person staying. I don’t bother with a scented candle in there either, mostly because half my guests have small children now and an open flame near a toddler’s room isn’t worth the ambience. And I stopped trying to keep the room permanently “guest ready” year round. It’s mostly for storage, and pretending otherwise just means more work resetting it for no reason.
Questions I get asked about this
No, one’s fine if you know it’s always going to be one person. We keep two because we regularly have couples to stay, and it felt odd to have a robe hanging up that was obviously spare for someone else.
Everything here still applies. The towels, the toiletries, a robe if you’ve got the space to hang one, even a folded blanket by the sofa. None of it needs a dedicated room to work.
The bed and bathroom the day before. The little personal touches, like the nappies for my niece, I do on the morning they’re arriving, because that’s when I actually know what’s needed.
It’s the thinking, not the spending
None of this cost very much, and none of it took a weekend. A decent set of bedding, two robes, full-size toiletries instead of the leftovers, and paying attention to the one or two things that matter to whoever’s actually coming to stay. That’s what gets remembered longest.
Leave a Reply
If you like the sort of recommendation that still holds up six months later, leave your email below and I'll write to you on Sunday.
Most Sundays, once the house has gone quiet and it's edging towards nine, a letter goes out. It's the one I'd write to a friend with good taste and not nearly enough time: one thing worth reading, one thing worth buying, and one thing to skip. No noise, no pressure to spend, just the considered version of what I've actually been using, loving, or quietly sending back.
