Plan ahead and create a stunning guest suite that will have family and friends booking up into next year, advises interiors writer CAROL BURNS, as she shares the ultimate coastal interior tips.

As the summer gets into full swing, demand for spare rooms along the coast soars like all those seagulls intent on nicking your chips. Summer is the time of year when loved ones descend, turning your house into their holiday home.

Often the spare room serves many purposes, often badly. It might be part-office, part-gym, part-storage – and there’s probably an old bed for overnight guests in there somewhere.

Having guests to stay can be one of the pleasures of living by the coast, but chucking them in a bed surrounded by unwanted technology and exercise equipment, rejected furniture and old curtains that don’t close properly can make them feel a little unwanted. So, find time to create a guest room with a warm welcome with a gorgeous coastal interior .

Giving your spare room an overhaul will usually start with having a clear-out – once it’s empty you can see its potential. Furniture doesn’t have to be new, or perfectly matched. Try matching tones of chalk paint to bring mismatched furniture back to life, and use stools as bedside tables.

Credit: https://johndyergallery.com/collections/prints-and-posters

Your spare bed might need a new mattress and new pillows. Test it out to decide. Give bare floors a buff and a lick of chalk paint and a smattering of rugs while window dressings should offer privacy and style. You might also need to make it flexibly suited to friends and couples, and even children. If you have room for a chair make it a sofa bed.

Hotel rooms are the standard for creating a great guest room. The basics include a double bed, bedside table with lamps, plus comfy seating and a small table and chair where guests can write their postcards or eat their smuggled-in fish supper.

Décor can be turbo-charged and coastal-inspired. You might want to limit the deckchair stripes elsewhere in your house, but a guest room should scream ‘YOU ARE STAYING ON THE COAST!’ Let your love of blue, deckchair designs, storm lanterns and portholes run rampant to create a seaside haven.

Walls can be splashed with coastal paintings and prints, refresh walls with printed borders featuring boats and seashells…the options are endless – and you finally have an excuse to join the tourists in those coastal gift shops you’ve secretly been dying to peruse. Alongside blue, whites and chalky off-whites work best here and few things shout seaside like white-painted shutters at the windows.

Create your sanctuary with these stunning coastal interiors

Luxury doesn’t have to be expensive. It’s easy to give the appearance of a five-star stay. Push the boat out with some of the cute accessories: a mini fridge, guest robes, and even a mini basket of coastal-inspired toiletries. Consider having bed linen and towels for the guest room only so it can be colour-coordinated.

Other things to consider are charging points for phones and tablets, carafes or bottles of water and storage for clothes and coastal accoutrements (insist the wetsuit stays outside). The ultimate luxury would be an ensuite, but that depends on availability. You should also ensure maximum privacy, so add a door lock.

Hotels love crisp white bed linens, but they have the luxury of sending their laundry out for professional cleaning. Go with blues or pastels instead, and add plenty of textures with throws in cotton, linen and wool piled together.

Once you are ready to take your first booking make yourself the first guest. If you get a good night’s sleep in there, chances are your guests will too.

And if you don’t have much demand from family and friends – it’s worth remembering that an extra bedroom in a house can add as much as £25,000 to the value of your home, so make the most of it and consider short-term lets. Using airbnb.co.uk can be a great way to make a little money and improve your social life. You can generally rent out a spare room for up to 90 days a year without needing any planning permission as a holiday let.

And remember…if there are some guests you want to avoid, it might be worth holding on to some of that junk!

Happy holidays!