COMPANY VISITS Making your guests feel at home

Fill a guest room with items that you and your visitors like.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- Before you open your home to guests this holiday season, be sure you've created a comfortable and inviting bedroom for them to enjoy.
Unless, of course, you're not all that interested in having them return the following year.
But for those who look forward to overnight visits or extended stays with friends and family, the guest bedroom should be a retreat for your visitors, their home away from home. Jazzing up your guest room doesn't take a lot of money or time, only creativity, thoughtfulness and your personal touch.
"The key is to put yourself in your guest's shoes," said interior designer Kit Davey of A Fresh Look, a decorating company in California that specializes in one-day decorating. "When you go on a trip away from home, what do you want to have, see and feel in the room where you'll be sleeping?
Make a list and set up your guest room using what you'd like to experience, and what you'd like to have around you."
Ask the experts
Who better to ask how to achieve the guest bedroom of your visitors' dreams than those folks who specialize in making guests feel welcome and at home: owners of bed and breakfast inns.
"Trends have changed over the years," said Carol Ruddick with the Cypress Inn in Conway, S.C. "The current guest absolutely wants all of the amenities they find in their own homes."
At Cypress Inn, Carol and her husband, Jim, have outfitted their rooms with all the must-have items, such as TV, VCR, books, magazines and telephone. The extras include chocolates on the side table, fresh flowers, plush mattresses, a pair of terry cloth bathrobes and extra pillows and towels.
"What we do is provide those extras that you may or may not have in your own bedroom," Ruddick said. "The important thing is to listen to your guests.
If the guests are asking for something, make a mental note and be sure to provide that in the room next time."
Restful, soothing and natural are how Wendell and Barbara Brustman of the Brustman House in Myrtle Beach, S.C., describe their guest rooms, where classic and antique furniture, original framed art and fresh plants and flowers abound throughout the two-story home.
"We try to make the rooms look clean, orderly, cheerful and bright," Wendell Brustman said.
"We try to do the guest rooms so they're quite a bit like what you'd have at home."
With a lush garden in the rear of the property, Barbara Brustman has all that she needs to fill vases, baskets and urns with flowers, foliage and greenery for splashes of color throughout the house.
Use what makes you happy
"There's magic in nature," Barbara Brustman said. "It's just so much nicer to have living plants instead of artificial." Barbara Brustman's advice is to fill your guest room with things that make you happy.
"We love original works of art, so the pieces are very personal to us," she said.
"For me, I relate to furniture in a very personal way. It expresses beauty. We've filled this home with antiques."
Decorating the space with art that holds sentimental value can enhance the warmth in a guest room, said Judy McNally, who with her husband, Steve, has transformed an old beach house into a bed and breakfast inn in Holden Beach, N.C., called Crescent Moon Inn.
"We've included personal art that means a lot to us," Judy McNally said. "I think it makes our guests feel they were being invited here. We've also incorporated gifts from friends and family into our rooms."
Because of the inn's proximity to the ocean, the McNallys decorated their inn in beachy colors, such as pastel pinks, corals, soft blues and greens, along with sisal rugs. Let the area where you live be your inspiration, they suggested.
"Good pastel colors, I think, are very soothing," Judy McNally said. "We live so near the beach, that we wanted to tie it in to Holden Beach."