A warm room, and the one job that is yours
A warm room is the single piece of preparation this house asks of a guest between October and April, and old Amsterdam buildings make it a real task.
The phrase is not decoration. Between the middle of autumn and the end of spring, the temperature of the room is the one variable the house cannot touch and the guest can, and it changes an hour more than any other choice on the list.
Why it is harder here than it looks
Central Amsterdam is built narrow and tall, much of it well over a century old. Single glazing is common, radiators are often original and undersized for the volume of air they are asked to heat, and a bedroom tucked under a roof loses warmth faster than anything below it. A room like that does not respond to a thermostat in ten minutes. It responds in something closer to an hour, which happens to be the length of the arrival window.
What actually works
Turn the heating up when the hour is confirmed rather than when the window opens. Close the curtains as soon as it is dark, because a cold pane pulls warmth out of a room all evening. Put something along the foot of the door if you can feel air moving under it. If the radiator is clearly not going to manage on its own, ask the front desk for a second heater before the evening rather than during it.
Roughly what temperature
Around twenty-three degrees is where most guests settle, which is warmer than a room you would sleep in and noticeably warmer than a hotel's default setting. Oil work on bare skin loses heat quickly, and a room that felt fine in a jumper will not feel fine ten minutes in. In a hot summer week the same logic runs backwards: open early, shade the glass, and cool the air before she arrives rather than after. The winter guide covers the buildings in detail.