Getting the Guest Room Ready Before Holiday Company Shows Up

Nobody is staying at my house this week. Nobody is coming next week either. And yet here I am in early October, standing in the doorway of the guest room, doing math about Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Because I know how this goes. The guest room is fine all fall, it is a laundry landing pad and the place where the wrapping paper lives, and then somebody says the words “we were thinking of driving in for Christmas” and suddenly I am changing sheets at eleven at night with a balsam fir candle lit like that is going to fix anything.

So this year I am doing it early. Not a whole redo, not a Pinterest situation, just the handful of things that make a guest room feel like someone thought about you. It took me one afternoon and most of it was stuff I already owned. If you are hosting this season, my Christmas hub and Thanksgiving hub have the food and party side covered. This post is just the room.

Heads up, some of the links below are affiliate links, which just means I get a tiny commission at no cost to you.

Sleep in it yourself for one night

This is the whole trick and it is free. Go sleep in the guest room. You will find out in about nine minutes that the reading lamp does not reach, that the streetlight hits you square in the face at 5 a.m., that there is nowhere to set down a glass of water, and that the mattress makes a sound.

I did this in the spring and learned that my guest bed had one usable outlet and it was behind the headboard. My mother in law had been charging her phone in the hallway for two years and never said a word. Two years.

The nightstand is doing the most

If you only fix one surface, fix this one. A guest is going to spend the whole night reaching for things in the dark, and a good nightstand means they never have to go wandering through your house at 2 a.m.

What earns its spot: a lamp they can turn on without hunting for a switch, an actual place to set a phone, a charger that lives there permanently so nobody has to ask, and water. I love a bedside lamp with a wireless charger built in because it solves two problems with one plug. And I keep a glass water carafe and tumbler set on the nightstand because it looks like I tried, and it means I am not listening to somebody hunt for cups at midnight.

A foldable 3 in 1 charging station that stays plugged in all year is one of those things that quietly solves a problem forever. Phone, watch and earbuds, all in one spot. Nobody has asked me for a charger since.

Fix the light, then fix the dark

Guest rooms are almost always too bright at night and too dim in the evening. Both are annoying, both are cheap to fix.

For the dark part, blackout curtain panels are the single biggest upgrade you can make to a room somebody is trying to sleep in, especially if your guest is coming from another time zone or arriving off a long holiday drive. And a small dusk to dawn plug in night light in the hallway between the guest room and the bathroom is such a small kindness. Nobody wants to feel their way along your walls.

If your house is loud, or your guest room shares a wall with a kid who will absolutely be up at 5:30 on Christmas morning, a white noise machine is worth every penny. I would rather buy one than apologize at breakfast.

The basket that saves everyone an awkward question

Here is my favorite thing in the whole room. A basket on the dresser with the stuff people forget and then feel weird asking for. Travel toothpaste and a spare toothbrush. Makeup removing wipes. A phone charger cable. Advil. Hair ties. A little lotion.

Nobody wants to knock on your bedroom door and ask if you have Tylenol. Put it in a basket and let them find it themselves. I use a simple woven storage basket and refill it maybe twice a year.

Same idea with towels. Set out a stack of clean plush cotton bath towels on the end of the bed instead of pointing vaguely toward the linen closet. It reads as hospitality and it takes four seconds.

Give them somewhere to put their stuff

This one I was slow to figure out. If there is nowhere to put a suitcase, your guest lives out of it on the floor for three days and feels like a houseguest the entire time.

Clear out half the closet. Not a symbolic two hangers, actual room. Put in real velvet hangers instead of the wire ones from the dry cleaner. Empty one dresser drawer. And if you have space, a folding wood luggage rack is the kind of thing that makes people say your house feels like a hotel, which is the whole compliment we are fishing for here.

Also, a small trash can. Every guest room needs one and about half of them do not have one. A little wood wastebasket tucked by the nightstand does the job and looks nice doing it.

Wash the extra blanket (and check the sheets)

You will put fresh sheets on the day before anyway. The thing everybody forgets is the extra blanket. The one folded at the foot of the bed that has been sitting there absorbing dust since the last person slept in it. Wash it now while you are thinking about it, because you will absolutely not be thinking about it the night before Thanksgiving, and you will be thinking about it even less on December 23.

If yours has seen better days, a plain cotton waffle weave throw in a neutral is one of those things that makes a bed look styled with zero effort, and it washes well, which matters more than styling. While you are in there, check the sheets too. If the guest set is pilled or mismatched, an organic percale sheet set is crisp, breathable and does not cost a fortune.

The takeaway

None of this is a project. It is one afternoon in October so that future you, the one who finds out on a Tuesday that your cousin is coming Friday, gets to just put clean sheets on a bed and be done. Then you can get back to the fun part, like making a batch of cranberry brie bites for when everyone walks in, or a loaf of pumpkin bread for the morning.

And the point is not really the room. It is that somebody walks in, sees a lamp and a water glass and a stack of towels, and understands that you were expecting them. That is the whole thing.

Looking for more holiday ideas? Everything seasonal lives on the Browse by Holiday page.

What is the one thing you always forget to set out for company? Drop it in the comments, I clearly still have half a list to write.

So glad you are here. Pam