How to design a regular bedroom and make it feel like a real hotel

The perfect guest bedroom should have the feel of "the best hotel room you've ever stayed in," says Christina Zimmer, principal at New York City-based hospitality-design firm Stonehill & Taylor, which has worked on fashionable hotels such as the NoMad and the Refinery in Manhattan. "You want a place where people can feel comfortable, that they have their own privacy and they have touches of convenience that we see in hotels all the time."

There should be adequate lighting for reading and a dimmer option for watching TV or relaxing. One hotel touch Ms. Zimmer suggests: nightstands and reading lights on both sides of the bed. "So often [in home guest bedrooms] there'll be a reading light just on one side and you're climbing over the other person to turn out the light if somebody is asleep before the other," she says.