The spare room has become one of the hardest-working spaces in the modern home. One day they’re the guest bedroom, the next they’re the home office, the gym, the dressing room or somewhere to quietly scroll through RightMove lists. Or maybe all of the above.
In the dream world, each activity will have its own dedicated room. In fact, most of us are asking for a room to work At least Two, often more. The trick is in the mix. After all, a desk built next to a mountain of children’s toys is hardly conducive to productive Zoom calls. Keeping a free weight next to the kettle seems efficient as long as the tea or workout goes without incident. And while there’s nothing wrong with a teen bedroom doubling as a guest room, it becomes less glamorous when the in-laws sleep on the sofa every university holiday.
With that said, the best office-spare room ideas tend to commit more strongly to one identity than the other, whether you create a guest bedroom with a discreet workspace, or a home office that can comfortably host the occasional overnight guest.
Unless you’re working with really generous square footage, flexibility is more important than forcing two fully functional rooms to become one. The ability to hide, fold or cleverly store one function while another is in use makes a huge difference in how quiet a space feels every day. For example, above, designer Natalie Traget tackled exactly that challenge, transforming a low-ceilinged duplex into a flexible live-work space with a fold-away bed that easily disappears into the wall, opening up space for a proper office. When guests arrive, generous built-in storage allows laptops, paperwork and the usual visual vibe of working life to disappear almost entirely, transforming the room back into something that feels warm, calm and welcoming.
If you must have more space, however, the design is potentially more promising. Many other rooms in our archives, downstairs, are confident spare bedrooms-cum-offices, with attractive antique desks or bureaus that can appear and function as a vanity, while also providing additional space for private work or calls. Whatever you’re working with, an office and spare room mash-up is a practical and doable combination, and plenty of designers in our archives have done it in inspiring ways.
