Guest Bed Ideas for Christmas

Hosting family or friends this Christmas? Stuck for sleep space? We've know the feeling. To alleviate any last minute room shuffling, we've got a few tips for a comfy Christmas.

Expectation: An idyllic family Christmas, where your guests settle into hotel-level luxury in a generous spare room or compact attic conversion. Everyone chats over mulled wine.

Reality: A frantic last-minute scramble to borrow airbeds, sleeping bags, and additional pillows. Many awkward late-night interactions in the corridor.

Sound familiar? If you’ve been nominated as the host household for Christmas, but aren’t exactly blessed with space, you’re likely already sizing up your rooms desperately trying to decide exactly where everyone’s going to sleep.

So, in the spirit of harmonious festive cohabitation, we figured we’d share some guest bed ideas for your family, friends, or distant relatives’ comfort. As well as your own.

Guest Bed Ideas for Small Spaces

Unless your house is a) a mansion, b) possesses TARDIS-like properties or c) benefits from an additional space such as a conservatory or loft conversion, you’ll need to focus your energy on guest bed ideas for small spaces.

And that’ll mean different things to different people. It might be a cosy sleep nook. It might be an ultra-economical setup designed to sleep several people in one room. It might even be one of those bolt-out-the-blue sleepover bed ideas that strikes you in the early hours.

Whatever your situation, you’ll need to use a splash of imagination, heaps of creative vision, and maybe even a smidge of chocolate-based bribery to convince the kids to temporarily relinquish their rooms.

Turn Your Living Room into a Guest Bedroom

The easiest to accomplish (and perhaps most obvious) of Christmas sleeping arrangements, temporarily converting your lounge into a cosy guest bedroom is a fantastic way to ensure that your guests enjoy maximum comfort, with minimal upheaval.

But comfort isn’t the only benefit. There’s privacy to consider, too. You see, no matter how cosy or inviting the sleep space is, guests risk sacrificing privacy to spend time with you.

And for some, that’s at best, frustrating, at worst, embarrassing. For others, however, it’s important to their overall health and well-being. Stress is often heightened during the festive season, and coping with Christmas anxieties is majorly important.

Essentially, you’re aiming to create a sort of mini hotel in your living room. But the type that can be neatly packed away come morning. Sound impossible? Not so.

It might require a little creative reshuffling of furniture (or, indeed, temporary removal) to make way for a mattress, camp bed, or even hammock, but it’ll be well worth the effort to allow your guests the space and comfort they need.

And who knows? Maybe they’ll reciprocate when you stay at their house?

Kids Christmas Camp Out

Engage your inner child and picture this: it’s bedtime. You’re sat in your pyjamas, sipping steaming hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire [or YouTube equivalent]. But you’re not in your bedroom. Oh, no. You’re camped out in the front room.

Hits you right in the nostalgia, doesn’t it?

The magic of Christmas has always possessed a little makeshift spirit. In fact, you could argue that’s where the magic originates – those quirky little family traditions you remember from childhood.

So, if you’re hurting for space as your guests are due to arrive – or you simply want to offer them the utmost privacy – you might try setting up a makeshift Christmas campout for your children.

It doesn’t need to be complicated (unless you’re eager to engage some festive creativity). It could be as simple as bedroll and sleeping bags, or as elaborate as improvised tents and camp beds, so long as everyone is warm, comfortable, and safe.

Note:If you’re concerned that a kid’s campout could prevent the adults from catching up after lights out, you could also consider sleeping all little ones in one room.

Create a Cosy Christmas Nook

Nooks are everywhere these days. Work nooks. Dining nooks. Reading nooks. Even gaming nooks. As a nation, we’ve developed a keen sense of economy of space – and how to exploit it.

And you can totally apply that logic to your Christmas sleeping arrangements.

Your first step should be to cast an eye over the space you have and asses how it could be (temporarily) tweaked to accommodate a cosy sleeping spot. For example, do you have space beneath the stairs, or maybe a quirky alcove in the hallway? How about a landing that’s roomier than it needs to be?

Next, engage your inner interior designer and fill said space with sleeping paraphernalia – stuff like camp beds, slide-out beds, futons, etc. You might even use a divider of some type – curtain or wooden – to offer the space maximum privacy.

Guest bed ideas rely on innovation and creativity, and by tapping into both, you’ll able to offer your guests a cosy sleep space that adds to the magic of Christmas. Something for them to reflect positively on afterwards.

Also, a chocolate mint on the pillow goes a long way. Maybe a chocolate Santa. It is Christmas, after all.

Sleep Hampers

Okay. We admit it. This isn’t about sleepover bed ideas, per se, but it is about comfort, so we’ll allow it.

Truthfully, however creative you get with your Christmas sleeping arrangements, your guests are sacrificing some measure of comfort for their festive visit. And that’s okay. It’s the type of sacrifice that makes Christmas such an adventure.

So, if you want to show your appreciation for their sacrifice and boost their comfort levels, you may want to put together a sleep hamper - a small collection of sleep-centric gifts that’ll facilitate their forty winks this festive season.

You could include:

• Sleep sprays & pillow mists
• Eye masks
• Herbal teas to help sleep
• Soothing shower gels
• Pyjamas (it isn’t Christmas without them!)

However you choose to stock your sleep hamper, it’ll make your guests feel respected and, by extension, your guest bed ideas less of a last-minute fix.

And there we have it, sleepover bed ideas to offer your Christmas guests the utmost comfort. Think we’ve missed anything? Let us know! It’s the season for sharing, after all.

For more ideas on styling your sleep space, check out our sleep blog for tips, tweaks, and inspiration.