If you live in a small home or apartment, when decorating you need to realize that your living room or lounge room is likely to be the place which doubles as the spare room when you have people staying the night.

Your guests may come in the form of an out of town relative, the niece you are babysitting or friends who have crashed after a party and while you may think surrendering your living room to be a spare room will be a decorating nightmare, it really isn’t. All you have to do is make some clever furniture choices and the rest is just about how you use the rest of your space – for example going to bed early to read, or watching TV in the bedroom to give your guests some privacy.

When choosing lounge room furniture which will help you convert the space easily into a spare room your first choice is of course a sofa bed. Modern sofa beds are also very stylish and really easy to set up, there are even ottomans which convert to double beds too! Just make sure you choose a sofa which converts to a double bed, as one guest can sleep in a double bed but if you have two guests they can’t share a single. Also, when choosing colors for your sofa bed, remember it will also be a bed so if part of the sofa converts to be the bed head, don’t choose one with colors which will keep your guests awake, or worse, give them nightmares.

The other essential decorating item for your lounge room will be a screen as it will not only offer privacy and a place for your guests to hang clothes or bags, it will also separate the space and go a long way to create the feeling of an actual ‘room’.

So if you want to invite guests to stay, you don’t have to put up with ugly blow up mattresses and a disjointed living room, with planning and clever furniture choices you will forget you even have guests.