Guest Rooms - The Ohana Cottage

Situated behind the main house is the ohana cottage. The ohana cottage is where the previous owners/builders lived as they built the main house, so it is a couple of years older (it's about twelve years old). While the main house has a very modern look (white Mediterranean-style stucco) the ohana cottage looks more like a typical island home. That's not to say it's small though. The cottage is actually split into our two largest and most private guest rooms, the Alihi lani and Alaula Suites and is ideal for our long-stay guests and for families. While the Alaula is about 400 square feet, the Alihi lani is about 550. 

Alaula feels like a large studio apartment. It is basically one large airy room with a vaulted ceiling, a beautiful four-poster Balinese king bed, and a large kitchenette, a private bathroom, and a small porch off the front. Guests of Alaula consistently say they enjoy the porch. It faces our long south lawn that runs down to the pool and is bordered by a row of magnificent tall tiger palms. From the porch you can hear the wind rustling the tiger palms and all the fantastic bird life that lives in them. The porch is an excellent place for an early morning cup of coffee or a sunset glass of wine. 

The Alihi lani Suite feels like a small island house. We love the feel of this space and even considered living in it ourselves. It has great ventilation, having windows facing both the ocean and the mountain, a beautiful hardwood floor and a soft, shaded light giving it a cool, quiet feel. The koi pond waterfall isn't as audible from the ohana cottage. Instead, you hear the birds, the dried plumeria leaves blowing in the driveway, or the rain pitter-pattering on the back roof. The other big benefit here is that it has a full kitchen, with a full-size refrigerator and an electric stove. For guests who wish to cook, this is a major benefit.  

Although it is the main house guest rooms that have the direct, grand ocean views, the ocean is visible from the Ohana Cottage. You can see the glowing sunset light pouring into these rooms in some of our online photos. 

What are the guest rooms really like? Mahina and Makani

Both the Mahina (moon room) and Makani (wind room) have their private entrances off the sunny pool lanai. They are next to each other and just about identical in size and appearance. They both have beautiful ocean views out across the pool lanai. Both rooms receive the ocean breezes blowing off the water during the day and the mountain breeze blowing down from behind at night. Both rooms are filled with soft natural light and, like the Moana room, have a clean modern minimalist look. While the Moana Room has a slightly vaulted ceiling, Mahina and Makani have beautiful wood ceilings. All three main house guest rooms are about 350 square feet and have good-sized 3/4 bathrooms (sink, toilet, shower) with nice, cool slate floors.  They are unusually large for B&B guest rooms.  It can be difficult to tell from just a few photos, and we're working on getting some new photos up soon.

What are the guest rooms really like?

It's very difficult to describe our guest rooms with just a few lines and one or two photographs, so I thought we'd go into detail a little bit more here in our blog.

Luana Inn is a very unique property as far as guest rooms go because, unlike most B&B's, this house was actually built to be a bed and breakfast, rather than being a house that was converted into a B&B. This resulted in guest rooms that were very well designed. Each guest room has a private entrance and private bathroom and is quite large, as far as traditional B&B rooms go. The bathrooms were not added in after the fact, which is also the case in many B&B's. I've stayed in more than one traditional B&B that either had a shared bath or where the guest room had a bathroom but was so tiny is was obviously a converted closet. Our first impression when we saw photos of the guest rooms here before we bought the property was that the rooms looked more like elegant resort rooms rather than crowded B&B guest rooms, which we liked! We are both fans of space, cleanliness, privacy, and minimalism. I'll try to describe each of the five guest rooms one at a time over my next few entries to give you a better feel for each of them.  

First I'll describe Moana, our ocean room. Moana is probably our single most popular room because it has the most dramatic ocean view. It's in the main house and has two doors, one onto the front yard with the wedding arch, and one onto our Great Room. Many of our guests who've stayed in this room have commented that they feel like the front yard is their own private lawn. The front lawn is a manicured grassy stretch bordered by a hedge with bright orange flowers that overlooks the ocean. We're so close to the ocean that you can often hear the waves at night from this room. Many of the Moana guests also leave the door to the Great Room open since few guests actually use that space. The Moana Room is open and airy and has great light. The calming sound of the koi pond waterfall is always in the background.