Friends and family coming to visit for the holidays? Here’s some tips on setting up a comfortable space for your guests.

Whether you are clearing out the clutter in the spare room or converting your kids’ room into a cosy guest space, creating a functional and comfortable environment is key.  Window furnishings such as curtains and blinds are often overlooked as a key component in setting up the perfect room setting.

Declutter the area around windows
Clutter such as furniture, plants, and shelving located around windows can make a room feel more enclosed. Try and declutter the space around your windows to make it seem more open and give a clear line of sight toward the windows. You will be surprised by how much larger a room will feel with a distinct lack of clutter.

Rooms that get too much sun
We love Summer in New Zealand but a guest room that gets too much sun will heat up quickly and can make it uncomfortable for guests. Too much additional sunlight can also reduce or effect quality of sleep.

Consider thermal or blockout curtains which assist with heat control. They are excellent insulators, keeping the heat out and the room cool over the summer months (and warm in winter!). This will also reduce need to have the air conditioning running frequently, which will result in a nasty energy bill at the end of the month.

Rooms that are not sun-facing, have small windows and/or are dark
Consider curtain that are light colours. Soft greys and beiges will help lighten up the room. A great tip is to use mirrors to your advantage. Mirrors are commonly used in interior design to make rooms feel bigger by placing them strategically. If you use one to reflect a window, it gives the illusion of more light entering the room, which in turn will make it seem like there is a lot more space than there is. Experiment with some decorative mirrors to see what kind of affect you can get.

Small rooms
Using blinds will almost always make a room look bigger than it would do with curtains, both because curtains protrude into the room more and have a fussier appearance than blinds, and they generally cover more of the walls around the window too.
Anytime you are selecting a window covering for a smaller room, make sure that what you go with is flush with the actual window. Vertical blinds and heavy curtain fabric and typically bad for this. For a better fit and overall aesthetic, stick to roller or venetian blinds.

Low Ceilings
Low ceilings give the appearance of a short and squashed room. You can work around this issue quite easily by making sure that any window coverings you use are mounted close to the ceiling. This will have the tendency to draw people’s eyes up rather than down, and make the roof seem a lot more vertical adding the illusion of height.