Modern Guest House by LalaCrafts

Sometimes it's hard to find a good guest house to stay for Azerothian holidays. If only there was a noticeboard in towns. Maybe a "LairBnB"?

@... seems to have had the same thought and made sure to create a modern guest house to host travelling heroes (and maybe make a bit of gold on the side).

I couldn't tell when I walked inside, but this is a custom interior inside a skybox room! These are getting fairly popular - designers have so much freedom to experiment and create.

Being primarily in European servers, I'm glad I'm visiting a guest house - my newly created North American undead version will appreciate a place to rest his weary literal bones after his journey across the pond.

Downstairs

LalaCrafts is already inside when I arrive to the lodge. There are some stairs leading up but she beckons me down to show me the rooms.

The ceiling is quite low but it doesn't feel claustrophobic at all. She points to the seating area where we can see the garden outside.

The rustic room

The downstairs room feels very open without sacrificing privacy - the use of clever corridor angles or curtains to separate rooms replaces any need of doors.

Everything feels ample but the space is very well optimised: Even the corridor has a function, it's got plenty of storage and even a vanity.

The room itself has the perfect blend of modern and rustic wooden vibe.

The bed is fairly large! Perfect if you're a large race, but you may struggle with the ceiling height - maybe the intention is to fit multiple people.

The quilt over the bed must have taken ages! It seems to be made up of various … dyed in what I think could be ….

The bed headboard wall is decorated with leaf patterns while most of the other walls host windows to the garden outside.

There's a cosy seating area by the windows - perfect for your morning coffee!

It's hard not to inspect all the details in the room, everything seems to be composed of many elements! But LalaCrafts pulls me away to show me this room's en-suite bathroom.

There's a fair amount of space here too: there's even both a bath and a shower! The bathroom is decorated using nature themes (there's a few potted plants as well as some climbers by the shower). I love how she used a … for the shower's water stream.

The kitchen & foyer

Before we get to the kitchen itself, LalaCrafts guides me through a compact study and coffee area.

This is one of those spaces that could easily be a corridor, but instead it has been made useful. There's a little desk, shelves, a cosy coffee spot and enough clutter to make the place feel lived-in without becoming messy.

LalaCrafts: Shelves also make houses look realistic

It's a small thing, but shelves are one of those details that can help sell the immersion by being yet another place to place decor. It's easy to imagine that a book or trinket on that shelf was left there three months ago and kind of forgotten about.

There's also a reading area nearby. She tells me it was originally meant to be another room, but the budget is limited.

Despite this, she still manages to add as much detail as she can. For example: the flooring of the foyer seems to be made up of different beams subtly mixed together - it adds texture without looking chaotic.

The outside that isn't outside

LalaCrafts then takes me "outside" the main structure to show me the façade.

This is where the skybox room magic becomes even more obvious.

She built the interior first, then tried to make the exterior facade look like an actual house afterwards. That is the exact opposite of Gecko's approach (where he went for structure first, and then filled in the interiors).

The landscape outside the guest house is meant to be appreciated from the inside, so that it gives rooms a nice view. From where we are, the forced perspective is a little easier to spot.

LalaCrafts says she would like to make the waterfalls more convincing when she has more budget, but I think they already work well from the most important angle: inside the house.

After all, if I'm renting this place for my Azerothian holiday, I don't need to swim in the waterfall. I just need to stare at it from the sofa while pretending I'm a person with no responsibilities.

LalaCrafts: If you noticed, inside the rocks, there's a bit of light in there. I put 40+ candles to light specific spots.

Clever! The rocks have depth because of the small pockets of light inside them. Some areas glow just enough to separate shapes and make the whole thing feel less flat.

Lighting is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. In every build my undead or human feet have stepped in, lighting is key to selling the immersion.

The best view in the house

We move back inside, this time we go upstairs. LalaCrafts says it's meant to be the best view of the house.

The seating area looks out onto the nature outside, and above it, the ceiling is set up for moon viewing. You can lie on the sofa and watch the stars.

It turns a normal seating area into a destination. This isn't just where you sit because there's a sofa. This is where you sit because the house wants you to stop for a moment.

There are lamps near the paintings, hidden lights underneath, and some areas glow gently. The result is a very warm, relaxing space.

Upstairs Bedroom

This room feels much fancier than the first one.

The bed is huge, and she tells me she used at least 50 pillows for it. This is exactly the kind of dangerous information that makes other builders look at their own beds and think: "I need 49 more pillows."

Again, the room has windows to the outside, keeping the nature theme consistent throughout the build. The view is never far away. Even when you're inside, the house keeps reminding you that you're staying somewhere scenic.

I ask how much renting this place would cost per day but she hasn't really thought about it.

Hopefully she prices this up and starts renting it. I can already imagine the listing on that non-existing LairBnB:

Modern woodland guest house. Sleeps several. Large beds. Scenic views. Three bathrooms.

The fancy bathroom

The second bedroom also has its own bathroom.

And it is fancy.

There's a large bath, a shower area, another toilet solution and a ceiling above the tub that is meant to look like glass.

The bath area feels more luxurious than the downstairs bathroom. The first one had a rustic, natural guest-room feeling; this one feels like the premium suite.

My host directs me towards the toilet. At this point, toilets have become one of my favourite recurring details in houses. There are so many creative ways of building one.

I don't know what it says about me that I get this excited by toilet solutions - particularly since I don't think this undead body has any use for them.

The TV area and powder room

We move into a TV area next - with a flat-screen!

This is the kind of modern Azerothian luxury that makes me wonder what goblins are charging for Netherflix.

Nearby, there's a powder room.

This toilet uses a fountain, which means we're now at three bathrooms and three different approaches to the same essential problem.

This house has three different toilet designs! This is a toilet treasure trove.

Upstairs kitchen

I had actually seen LalaCrafts' kitchen before, in one of her posts, but seeing it in person makes it much more impressive. There are little drawers, a built-in oven, windows to the outside and plenty of small domestic touches that make me want to start cooking.

Or at least pretend to cook. I am still undead. I don't think I need the nutrition.

The oven glow is especially clever. She tells me that it's the back side of an ….

That's one of my favourite things about WoW Housing: every time I think I'm looking at an oven, a sink, a shower or a toilet, someone tells me it's actually the back of a fireplace, a fountain clipped through a wall, or three beams in a trench-coat.

Through the kitchen windows, the outside greenery makes the whole room feel larger than it actually is. It feels like a holiday home tucked away somewhere peaceful, where you can drink coffee in the morning and absolutely not think about raids, world-ending threats or your auction house losses.

Sitting down for a chat

After the tour, we sit down by the warm fire to chat.

It's cosy, though I prefer the cold - it keeps the rot away. Still I can imagine this would feel much better as my human self.

I start by asking about what resources she uses: YouTube guides and Pinterest are her main sources of inspiration.

She also experiments a lot on her own. Early on, she was experimenting with bookcases as floors/ceilings/walls because they're dyeable.

That's something I keep seeing among strong builders: at some point, they stop seeing items as what they're supposed to be.

A bookcase is not a bookcase. A fireplace is not a fireplace. A fountain is not a fountain.

Everything is a shape, a texture, a colour, a glow or a collision box. A creative solution to a constraint in the game.

Budget, dyes and pain

I ask how much time and gold she spent on the build.

She doesn't have a precise estimate.

Mostly because, as she puts it: "it's painful to know".

There were a lot of dyes involved, and she sometimes changes things just to see whether they fit better. That means items get revised, colours get swapped, and the total cost quietly creeps up.

LalaCrafts says that when you have passion, you don't really feel how much time or gold you've spent.

She also mentions that during the first month of housing on live servers, she wasn't building much. She was farming and selling decor instead.

That was smart. Prices were inflated, everyone needed everything, and the early housing economy was a terrifying goblin experiment.

She completed her first house on January 19th and had SoulBreezy visit it. Back then, everyone knew much less about housing, so every trick felt like a discovery.

Now the community is learning quickly, and builds like this show how fast the standards are rising.

What would she change?

When I ask what she would change, LalaCrafts says she would love to make the waterfalls more convincing.

She also mentions wanting to recreate Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater someday.

Advice for builders

Before wrapping up, I ask LalaCrafts what advice she would give to readers who might be inspired by her build.

She immediately calls out "lighting" - I think most builders agree on this.

She learned a lot about lighting from GPatHome's' builds. Hidden lights under furniture, candles tucked inside rocks, glows placed just out of sight - they all add depth without drawing too much attention to themselves.

Her second piece of advice is simple:

Build small.

A lot of people try to create too many rooms and then run out of decor before they can add enough detail. Smaller spaces are easier to fill, easier to light and often feel more realistic.

Small and cosy almost always beats large and empty - unless you're going for a creepy empty warehouse.

This guest house is a good example of that. It has multiple rooms, bathrooms, views, seating areas and a kitchen, but it doesn't feel like a giant empty mansion. It feels compact, detailed and carefully arranged.

No detail alone makes the house, but together they create the illusion that the house is lived in, or has a story.

Need more?

You can find LalaCrafts on Youtube.

She also recommended a few other builders and creators to check out:

• WigWagDesigns
• MoriiBuilds
• GPatHome

Wrapping up

This guest house is another example that shows why skybox rooms have become such a game changer. In the hands of a good builder, they become custom interiors, fake exteriors, holiday homes or even entire cities.

Now someone just needs to make that LairBnB noticeboard.

I'll see you on the next house tour!