The Best Way To Convert Your Spare Room Into An Office

 A collaborative post 

Having a spare room is great as you have a room free if guests come to stay. Your parents might stop by for a visit one time, and you can put them up in the spare room to be comfortable – rather than you and your partner sleeping on blow-up mattresses in the living room! 

However, a spare room is also a great place for a home office. If you’re permanently working from home, it’s so beneficial for productivity to have a separate office space to work in. However (again) you then suffer from not having the luxury of a spare room for guests!! It feels like you have to make a trade-off somewhere…or do you?

What if there was a way to convert your spare room into an office while retaining the classic elements of a spare room. In essence, it’s a place where you can work every day, but it can also be a bedroom for guests when they need it. Is this possible? Yes, and here’s how you achieve it:

Place a sofa bed in your home office

Having a small sofa in your office space is a good idea as it’s somewhere for you to sit while you have a break from work or read some emails. It also just makes the place feel more professional – you could even bring clients to your office and that’s a place for them to sit. If you make this a small sofa bed, you instantly have somewhere for people to sleep. When the room is in office mode, it’s a sofa. If you have guests coming round, it unfolds and becomes a bed for them. It means you can have a bed in your office without it taking up all of the floor space in there!

Use a folding desk

Obviously, the main part of your office will be the desk that you work at. Unfortunately, office desks can take up a lot of room. To compound the unfortunateness, you might have a small spare room. In fact, most spare rooms tend to be rather small as they’re not really intended to be proper bedrooms. So, having a big desk in there will take up a huge chunk of space and make it hard for any guests to be comfortable while they’re there. Also, not to mention that they might accidentally knock things off your desk or damage it. 

Instead, you should use a folding desk – possibly complete with a folding chair. There are different varieties of this, the most basic of which fold in half and can be stored away against a wall or in a cupboard. A fancier version can fold away against a wall and be pulled out from it when needed. In either case, you have a desk to use when required, but it can be put away in an instant when your spare room is needed for spare room purposes. 

Don’t use a desktop PC

Instead of buying and using a desktop PC, use a laptop. This is beneficial when combined with the previous point of using a folding desk. It is easy to take your laptop off your desk when you need to put it away. Taking a PC from a desk involves more heavy lifting, multiple parts, and numerous wires. It is simply more convenient to have a laptop, and it means you can keep working from home from another location when your guests are in the house. 

Oh, that throws up a good point about folding desks – the first variety could be better as you can take it to another room and use it while your spare room is occupied!

Install wardrobes on the walls

It is well worth having a wardrobe or closet on the wall in your home office. This can be used as storage for all sorts of things. Ideally, you want a wardrobe with numerous compartments and drawers. In the drawers or built-in cabinets, you can store work stuff. But, you have the main section of the wardrobe to use for clothes. Now, this is for your guests to use when they stay in the room. It’s a place for them to hang their clothes, so they don’t have to keep them stashed in a suitcase. 

Yep, after following these steps you will have a basic home office that doubles up as a spare room. This is all you really need to get the balance between work and comfort. Now, you have a productive place to work without sacrificing your spare room for guests.