One level, at least two pigs, and maximum floor area
A guinea pig's first home is a floor pen, not a climbing cage. Guinea pigs have sturdy bodies, short legs, and no talent for ramps or heights, and a fall from a level that suits a rat can break a guinea pig's leg, so give the space as one generous single storey. Start with at least two guinea pigs, bought or adopted together, because these are herd animals that call to each other, follow each other to the hay, and settle far faster in company.
Choose the largest pen or lined floor enclosure you can fit, with sides high enough to contain bedding but low enough for you to step in for cleaning and lap time. Site it in a room the family actually uses, out of drafts and direct sun and away from a television's loudest hours. Guinea pigs are awake in bursts through the day, chat with soft wheeks when they hear a food bag, and visibly relax when home life happens around them rather than in a shut spare room.
Hay everywhere, a hide per pig, and simple flooring
Hay is the furnishing and the food at once. Fill a rack or a generous pile in one corner and keep it topped up without limit: guinea pigs graze almost constantly, and hay keeps both digestion and teeth working as they should. Line the floor with fleece liners over an absorbent layer, swept daily and washed on rotation, or with a deep layer of plain paper bedding if laundry is impractical. Bare wire floors and cedar shavings do not belong in a guinea pig pen.
Give every pig its own enclosed hide, plus one spare, with two exits where possible. A new guinea pig's first instinct is to run and freeze under cover, and arguments in the first week are usually about a single hide with a single doorway. Wooden houses, fleece tunnels, and plain cardboard boxes with doors cut in both ends all work, and the spare hide lets a pig move away from a companion without having nowhere to go.
The vitamin C plate and two water points
Set the feeding corner away from the main sleeping hides. Alongside unlimited hay and a plain guinea pig pellet, serve a daily cup of fresh vegetables chosen with vitamin C in mind — guinea pigs, like people, cannot make this vitamin and must eat it every day, so pepper pieces, leafy greens, and similar fresh foods are a requirement here rather than a treat. Introduce vegetables gradually in the first week to avoid loose droppings, and remove uneaten fresh food before it wilts into the bedding.
Fit two water bottles, or a bottle and a heavy bowl, at snout height on the pen sides. One bottle can block or be monopolised, and a pair of pigs drinking little because a spout has stuck is a quiet problem that a second water point prevents.
First days: quiet voices, lap time, and shared jobs
Let the pigs hide for the first day, speaking nearby so your voices become part of the room, then begin short lap sessions on a towel, one pig at a time, with a piece of vegetable as payment. Guinea pigs tame by routine: same times, same sounds, same hands.
The care here is frequent and light — morning hay and bottle check, evening vegetables and sweep, fleece washed in rotation — which makes it ideal to split across a family. Listing those jobs once and marking them off as they happen is what KinsLe Care Teams does for this guinea pig home, with each completed task timestamped against the pigs' profile.