Guest bedrooms...

Do you have a guest bedroom?

How frequently is your guest bedroom used as a guest bedroom?

Does your guest bedroom serve a second function (eg. office, toy room...)?

I'm watching The Block 2011 and everybody's first room was a guest bedroom. They spent lots of money and time on the room and only one team made it dual function (study/bedroom) and they got crucified by the judges for it. But for those that made an exclusive purpose 'guest bedroom' how much will it be used for this particular function?

We never had a big enough house in Brisbane to guest bedroom. But when we moved to NZ we decided it was important to have a room for guest to stay in as we expected family to visit. But it still needed to be a dual purpose room as we couldn't afford a large enough house to have a sole purpose guest room. Which meant we had to compromise on bedding comfort and have a sofa bed instead of a normal double bed (and after sleeping on the sofa bed for 5 weeks ourselves, I think it is the most comfortable sofa bed we have slept on and we've slept on a few). Because the reality is that in the 35 months we've been living here we have had people sleeping in our guest room for 13% of that time. And the only people who've stayed in our guest room have been family and 1 couple from a local bible college (they did a mission at our church for a week).

Then if we think the opposite way...as a family of five, we need more space than one guest bedroom if we were to stay at anybody's house. Space that most of our family and friends don't have (even if they do have a guest bedroom).

So why is a guest bedroom such an important selling point when renovating a house for maximum profit? Are we kidding ourselves about our willingness to have people in our home or our willingness to fit in with somebody else's life if we stay at their house (not to mention any of the practicality problems)?