It’s a case of ‘goodbye guest bedroom, hello games room’ for many Brits, with man caves and en suites also taking priority over visitors’ sleeping quarters.

According to a new survey from Hillarys.co.uk, just two fifths (41 per cent) of Brits lucky enough to have a spare room use it as a designated guest bedroom – but only ‘two or three times a year’,

Hillarys quizzed more than 2,300 UK adults with at least one spare room and found that 26 per cent were using the space as a dressing room, while 20 per cent had made it into a man cave.

A games or cinema room was the focus for 17 per cent of respondents, 10 per cent used it as an office and 13 per cent simply labelled it a junk room.

These alternatives were seeing a lot more use than the guest bedroom, with 43 per cent saying the room was used daily, while 31 per cent said they used it ‘most days’. Just 5 per cent of respondents stated that they used their alternative room ‘less than once a month’.

Tara Hall, spokesperson for Hillarys, said: “Whilst spare bedrooms are useful, when the results show that they’re rarely used it does make more sense to transform the room into something that you’re going to use on a regular basis, whether that’s a dressing room or something more quirky. There’s nothing worse than having a space that looks great but goes unused.”