How to Design a Home Office and Guest Room Combo

How a home office with a Murphy bed can create the ultimate 2-in-1 space.

By Caden Wilding

If you are like many homeowners, you have an extra room in your home that is terribly ill-defined. It’s likely shapeless, lifeless, only partially useful, and mainly used as a landing zone for extra clutter that has no other home. But also like many homeowners, you could seriously benefit from having an extra room that works exactly how you need it to. Whether you need a functional work from home zone, a craft room, storage room, guest room, or all of the above, know that the dead zone can be transformed in a way that checks all your boxes while also looking and feeling designed, intentional, and beautiful. Using a wall bed in this type of four-in-one space is a great way to maximize space as well as visual cohesiveness, and when designing a room with so many purposes, seamless is the name of the game. When the wall bed is up, it blends into your cabinetry. When you need it, it folds down to be easily available for you and your guests. With a Murphy bed-home office combo, you can create the useful, beautiful, and seamless space you crave.

4 Steps to Creating Your Dream Office/Guest Room Combo

In order to create such a room, there are several things to keep in mind. Let’s break it down into 4 steps to achieving your dream home office and guest room combo.

1. Select the style and shape of your desktop. Whether it’ll be used for emails and zoom calls or as a crafting or sewing zone, you’ll need a worktop. Should it be in a corner to utilize what would usually be dead space or along the wall? Will you need small shelves below to house a printer or tower? How long a desktop will give you optimal working space? Keep this in mind.
2. Select the type of lower cabinets you’ll want. There are many options here and so many different configurations available. You can choose between drawers, doors, open shelves, or even filing cabinets. Will you be mainly storing small items like pencils and post-its, or larger items like sewing machines or even off-season decor and clothing? Most people opt for a combination. Consider cataloging the items you’ve got and plan for item placement working away from the desktop in order of frequency of use as you choose your cabinet styles.
3. Select the type of upper cabinets you’ll need. Just like the lowers, you can choose from a variety of cabinet types: doors with adjustable shelves behind, open shelves, or even glass doors allowing your items to be displayed, perhaps with some lighting. Keep in mind where your desktop will fall and if you’d like below-cabinet lighting to illuminate your work area, as well.
4. Choose where to put your Murphy bed. This will likely depend on the layout of your room and the size of the bed you’d like to have. But keep in mind how the office functions when the bed is down and what type of cabinet will be on either side of the bed that may need to operate as a nightstand. You may also want to add a large side cabinet to one or both sides of your bed that can function as a dresser or wardrobe for your guests’ items.

Adding Personality

After completing those 4 simple steps all that’s left is the fun part: wood type, style, and color. Though there are as many options as there are colors under the sun, think about how you’d like the room to feel. Light, bright, sunny? Moody, dusky, cavelike? What other furniture, if any, will be in the room? How much natural light does it get? Answering these questions will narrow down your options significantly. Know that whatever you choose, the cabinetry and Murphy bed combo will already be seamless and sophisticated and can only be elevated.

Get to work today transforming that bland catch-all room into the perfect home office-guest room mashup. A room that fulfills every need from scrapbooking and slumber partying to emails and meetings, and looks good doing it. Get started with Wilding Wallbeds today.

Caden Wilding

Director of Digital Marketing

Caden is our in-house guru on all things digital marketing. But, before he was building advertising campaigns he was building Murphy beds and TV Lift Furniture. Woodworking is in Caden’s blood…