Our Quick Weekend Guest Room Before & After Makeover

Can you believe that this guest room makeover took only a weekend? Get some inspiration on how to make a dramatic change in little time.

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Honestly, how are the holidays already here?! We were hosting family this year.

So in a mad dash to prep our house for the holidays, we finally finished our guest room before and after makeover in one weekend.

We still want to redo those ugly rust colored cement floors. But our main goal was to make this room intentional, crisp, and clean, and do it quickly

That meant no major floor or wired lighting overhaul, but more of a freshening up.

We have two guest rooms. The first guest room is tiny (which is why there is a daybed).

The second guest room (the one we are featuring here) use to be where all the stray furniture went to live.

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

The Before and After

The guest room previously wasn’t hideous, but it was very uninviting and stark.

It also still had the old mismatched white paint from the previous renters from when we first moved in a little over three years ago.

We’ve been loving the look of the navy, grey, and emerald tone walls that are trending right now.

However, because of how dark the room can be most of the day with only one small window, we opted to keep the white and make a single accent wall instead.

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

The Accent Wall

We really wanted a bold wallpaper design for the accent wall so we choose this fun jungle print.

We did something similar in this home office bedroom makeover. A patterned accent wall will always create a huge statement.

Thank goodness for family with handy skills! Between our parents and aunts, we basically have an entire construction crew. It’s the best!

We can’t even begin to tell you how many times they’ve saved us when it comes to DIY’ing. There’s power in numbers!

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Why We Opted to Use Sherwin-Williams Paint Shield®

Not only did we want to create a (literally) clean slate from the previous renters, but we also used the Sherwin-Williams Paint Shield® which is a breakthrough microbicidal paint with the power to kill certain bacteria on painted surfaces.

Basically our inner germaphobe was FREAKING OUT with excitement.

We think we can all agree that everyone loves the new, clean feeling of a fresh coat of paint

And Paint Shield actually kills more than 99.9 percent of Staph, MRSA, E.coli, VRE, and Enterobacter aerogenes within two hours of exposure on painted surfaces.

Plus, it lasts for up to four years (as long as the integrity of the painted surface is maintained). So it’s not a built in maid service for dirty rooms, but it will definitely fend for you in well-kept spaces.

We wanted to use it in the guest room since it gets a lot of holiday visitors.

When we buy (which we’re in the process of, but shhh!), we 100% plan to use Paint Shield microbicidal in the bathrooms and kitchen for it’s bacteria killing power.

Also important to note, our favorite Sherwin-Williams white to use is “Extra White (SW  7006)” but the microbicidal paint only comes in egg-shell sheen.

So this is something to keep in mind when planning your space.

We painted all of the surfaces in the guest room minus the base boards and door/doorframe because we’ve found that a semi-gloss finish makes those easier to keep clean with pet fur flying around.

And if you’re accustomed to using Sherwin-Williams for home projects like we are, Paint Shield® microbicidal paint goes on just as thick as their usual paints.

So don’t feel like you have to overcompensate with extra gallons/extra coats just to get the bacteria fighting perks.

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Incorporating Our Accent Wall Colors

We wanted to tell in the jungle green from the wallpaper into our decor so we painted our accent shelf green,

We also used the Paint Shield paint in Reclining Green (SW 6744) since it’s home to the TV remotes and handled quite a bit. 

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Guest Room Decor

As for furniture, we kept the same Ikea bed frame and bedding, and only added velvet pink pillows.

We moved the same white desk to the other corner of the room to add room for white campaign style nightstands.

With the wallpaper print being pretty busy, we used simple modern wall sconces and a single neutral print as the focal point over the bed.

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

We also fell in love with this gold accent chair that we HAD to find room for it somewhere. We’re sure you’ll be seeing this chair in more styled corners for DIY’s because we just love it so much.

On the flip-side, we fell short with the rug choice that we ordered online and ended up getting this one in a pinch.

But it was still too much of a warm white (which you can totally tell in the photo above). So we’re going to end up replacing it with something else in the future once we find the right one.

To add another hint of pink, we made a pink version of this DIY watercolor throw blanket.

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Our Vanity and Desk Set Up

It’s always a pet peeve of mine when we’re visiting somewhere that doesn’t have a good place to work and/or get ready if we’re there for multiple days.

When it came to the desk area, we wanted it to serve as both a vanity and a work space depending on the guest. So we added a round gold mirror to tie them together.

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

There’s still some fine-tuning to be done. But we love the way it came together for a quick re-do before friends and family come visit!

What do you all think? Are any of you prepping any rooms for the holidays?

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

Guest Room Sources

Palm Jungle Forest Green Wallpaper

Gold Peacock Accent Chair

Round gold mirror

White Micke Desk

White bed frame

Else Wall Sconces

white campaign style nightstands

Velvet pink pillows

Gold shelf brackets

Framed animal prints

Retro Lynwood White Desk Lamp

Pink DIY watercolor throw blanket

Sharing our guest room before & after weekend makeover that we squeezed in before the holidays! - sugar and cloth

This post was sponsored by Sherwin-Williams.

Please note that we may earn a commission for some of the above affiliate links. However, products featured are independently selected and personally well-loved by us!

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29 Comments

  1. Nice post. I was checking constantly this blog and I am impressed! Extremely helpful information specially the last part I care for such info a lot. I was seeking this particular information for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.

  2. Wow! Forget the guests, I want this in my bedroom! 😍 You’ve done a great job.

  3. Just loved it. That peacock chair is extremely expensive though may b i’ll get a similar much cheaper bamboo chair and spray paint it in gold.

  4. 😱Woah! Gorgeous! I followed the link for the wallpaper and the colors on that site look like the wallpaper is just shades of green whereas your photos look to have a mix of turquoise and green, and a lot more saturated. Did they stop selling that exact color way or did you tweak your wallpaper after you installed it?
    Thanks!

    1. Oh no! We didn’t make any adjustments to the wall paper, so they may have stopped selling that specific one!

  5. So bright and inviting! that palm wallpaper is adorable, i bet your friends and family will line up to stay in your house hah i know i would!!

  6. I love the way this room turned out! The pink and teal work so well together – just enough interest but still relaxing. I have been looking for blush colored pillows for a while too, and these ones are actually in my price range. Thanks for sharing!

    Julia – http://bunnybaubles.com

  7. Im coming to stay!! SERIOUSLY. The room looks amazing!! Can i hire you to decorate EveRy single room of our new house??? 😂🙏🏼