Doing double duty

Alexandria Realtor Barbara Boudreau had her files at the ready near the kitchen phone on the few occasions she worked from home last year. Then she decided she did not need the “clutter” there or in the unfinished basement, which she was using for storage. She needed a home office, a second bathroom and additional guest space in her two-bedroom town house.

Her solution: Tear down the basement walls that created unworkable odd-shaped spaces and start over. Like many other homeowners, Ms. Boudreau wanted to create what is called a double-duty room, a room designed to combine functions in one space.

In December, she hired interior designer Carolin Schebish, owner of Design Exchange in Fairfax, to turn the L-shaped basement into usable space with a double-duty room. The space includes a bathroom separating the home office, which has a custom-made desk for work and sewing projects, from the lounge area. The lounge area, a combined sitting and guest room, has a TV on top of a chest of drawers, bookshelves, a sofa bed, a chair and an ottoman for a coffee table.

“It’s wonderful,” Ms. Boudreau says. “It has made the space so much more livable.”

A common double-duty room is the guest room coupled with a home office, area interior designers say.

“I think if you have limited space that it’s a great way to get double use out of the room,” says Dee Thornton, principal and senior designer for House Works Interiors in Alexandria.

Double-duty rooms made a comeback in the latter part of the 20th century, recalling the Victorian period, when the bedroom was a place for entertaining and the sitting room for dining, says Catherine Armour, chair of design at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, part of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Northwest.

“The idea of comfort was very important,” she says. “We’re facing the same thing today.”

Ms. Armour recommends that homeowners determine the dominant use of a double-duty room, then design the room to provide the most space for that use and separate the uses.

For example, the most common use in a combined home office and guest room is the office, says Kay Kern, owner of Kay Kern Design in Fairfax Station.

“Now there is more telecommuting. People are working out of their homes more,” she says. “Even if they aren’t working out of the home, they have a computer.”

Mrs. Kern recommends that the room include a chair for office and guest use, good lighting for reading at night, storage space in empty dresser drawers and the closet, and a clock radio, along with easy access to a bathroom.

“You want to make sure it’s going to be more comfortable than just pulling out a mattress,” she says.

To save space, the mattress can be in the form of a futon, sofa bed, trundle bed or Murphy bed (which can look like a cabinet when folded up).

As for the office area, Mrs. Kern suggests built-in office furniture, such as a desk and cabinets that are attached to the wall to save space and an armoire that closes off the computer when not in use and keeps the room from looking like an office.

“You want to do something to make it functional for the office, but you also want to make it welcoming for the guest,” she says.

Another common double-duty room is the dining room combined with a library, because the dining room tends to be used less when a breakfast room is available, Ms. Thornton says.

“You want to be careful. If it is a formal dining room, the bookcases need to be built with an element of formality to them,” she says, adding on the other hand that “the presence of books in the room can be very warm and rich. It can be done in a way that makes it perfectly appropriate for a dining space.”

The books there can be “very charming,” says Rebecca Hubler, owner of Designed Interiors in Annandale. “I like being surrounded by books. It’s like eating in a pub or a library.”

Besides bookshelves, the furnishings for the room can include a reading chair and a table or library desk for dining and desk work. The bookshelves can be built into the wall; the same goes for a type of table that folds up into a side table to save space.

Claire Edwards gave up the dining room in her Alexandria home to turn several small rooms into a large double-duty room. She hired an architect last year to expand the kitchen and add a breakfast room and, in a two-story addition, a family room on the first floor and a master bedroom on the second. She furnished the rooms, which flow into one another, with a six-chair table and a couch that faces a fireplace, which is flanked by bookshelves. One of the bookshelves has a built-in television.

“It’s more multifunctional,” says Mrs. Edwards, a mother of two. “This room is where we spend 99 percent of our time when we’re not asleep.”

Other popular double-duty rooms pair the guest room with a sitting room, family room, library or study; the sitting room or a bedroom with an office; and the kitchen with the family or great room. Sewing or hobby rooms might be paired with an office, guest room or bedroom or placed in a corner of the family room. A mudroom, garden room and laundry room also might be combined.

In any case, “The pieces of [double-duty] rooms should be related, maybe echoing the same wood finishes and other finishes in the room,” Ms. Armour says. “Not that the fabrics have to match, but they should relate to each other.”

Ideas that would not work well as double-duty rooms, she says, include a home gym combined with a bedroom or office, because looking at the exercise equipment while doing other activities can be a distraction, and a nursery combined with any other room except the master bedroom because other uses would be distractions for the baby.

Ms. Armour suggests using a small separate room within the master-bedroom complex, if available, for a nursery until the baby is ready to sleep alone in a crib. The room could be used later for a larger dressing room or home office, she says, adding, “In the life of a home, the room isn’t going to be a nursery forever.”

A walk-in closet also can be used for a nursery or as office space, Mrs. Schebish says. “It’s very often when an infant first comes home, the baby will be in the master bedroom because there is so much time and individual attention [needed],” she says. “The goal is to find a quiet place for them so they can sleep.”

If such a room is not available, the nursery could be combined with a home office or family room.

Mrs. Kern suggests using a room divider or a screen to separate the two room functions, or using a fabric screen designed to absorb light and sound around the crib area. She recommends furnishing both areas of the room with simple, straight-line furniture and choosing a color scheme with primary colors or neutral tones and not nursery pastels or dark colors.

“Ideally, everybody would like to have separate rooms for different things,” Mrs. Kern says, but if space is at a premium, double-duty rooms can expand options.