One Room Challenge Week 1 – Office + Guest Room Design Plan

Today marks the beginning of the Spring Edition of the One Room Challenge, and I am so pumped! I’ll be finishing my husband’s home office, which doubles as our guest bedroom. This is the one room in our new home that has sat pretty much completely empty since we moved in last October. And now more than ever my husband could really use a dedicated work space, so this feels like the perfect room to tackle.

What is the One Room Challenge?

For those that aren’t already familiar, The One Room Challenge is the brain child of Linda from Calling It Home. Twice a year she organizes this huge interior design event, with Better Homes & Gardens as the media sponsor, where twenty Featured Designers and hundreds of Guest Participants (like myself) makeover a room of their choosing.

What is normally a 6 week challenge has been extended to 8 weeks due to current circumstances. So fingers crossed, all Designers and Participants will be sharing their final room reveals by July 2nd!

This fun challenge always evokes a spirit of creativity and community in the online design world. Which is why I’m so excited to not only participate but to follow along with all of the designers and participants! I’ve already finished Netflix, so this will be a welcome distraction. 😉

A Look at the Before

I purposely planned for this room to double function as both a home office for my husband and a guest room for our out of town visitors (which we usually host a few times a year because all of our family members live in different states) because I just really did not want to have any unused spaces in our new home.

I mean, I want guests to feel comfortable when they stay with us, but I didn’t want to have a dedicated guest bedroom that would sit empty the majority of the time.

Although, my design goal for this space is for it to look more like an office than a bedroom, which is why I opted to go with floor to ceiling window frame molding in here. I love the drama of this look and how it makes the room appear much larger than it is.

And the bold, tone-on-tone color (Sherwin Williams Tradd Street Green) on the walls brings in a moody, masculine vibe that feels perfect for a man’s office.

Currently & the Design Plan

Other than molding, paint and lighting, the room has sat empty since we moved in, save for the highboy that belonged to my husband’s grandparents.

We decided on a sleeper sofa for this room because it made the most sense space-wise, plus it helps to keep the room from feeling like a bedroom on a normal day. We did a bunch of research on sleeper sofas, and American Leather was the most highly rated for comfort. Our sofa arrived at the end of February.

So I’ve got a pretty good jumpstart on this space already which is another reason why I chose this room for this spring’s ORC. Besides bringing in a desk and chair, I’ll really just be working on a few simple DIY’s that I’m really excited about and of course, all of the finishing details, which are my favorite part of the design process!

There’s a definite masculine vibe to this design plan which is perfect for my husband’s office, but I love that the lines of the highboy and the artwork by Laurel Dawn Corner Studio add a touch of femininity.

I also have some fun DIYs planned that I can’t wait to share more about in the coming weeks. One of which I’ve shared a little bit about over on my Instagram Stories. The glass paneled doors in this room lead out onto the front porch, so I plan to include that space during this design challenge. I’m currently working on building a porch swing! Hopefully next week I’ll have more to share on that project! For now, check out this awesome tutorial I found at Plank & Pillow. I’m using this as the base for my swing and making a couple of small tweaks.

Thanks for following along!