Happy Friday! Wow, how is it already September?! If you missed it, I posted my August best sellers here. For this month’s first “Furnishing Friday“, I’m talking about basement design! A basement can be a great space for many different functions and purposes. Playrooms, bonus spaces, media rooms, home gyms, man caves, the list goes on and on!
The designs below were created for a client whose basement was actually their second floor. Complete with the kids’ bedrooms, bathrooms (ps. be on the lookout for those), family room, home office, and gym, it is a large space! This layout often occurs in lake houses or houses built on a hill where the main floor takes full advantage of views.
In basement design, even where the space is broke up into different rooms, you want to have a cohesive palette. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, paint is the #1 way to create cohesion in your home! For these design boards, we went with an “earthy coastal” color palette of whites, gray greens, and navy. If your space is one large open room, the same advice still applies, but you also want to try to create different “zones” to break up the room!
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Space 1: Bonus Room
For this area, we started with a neutral wall color of SW Pure White. I wanted to incorporate gray and navy accents to stick with the overall color palette. My client already had navy curtains that I was able to utilize for their walk out sliders. In this case, I felt dark curtains were important as they wanted to be able to use the space for a teen hangout/watching movies/sleepovers. Building on the teen hangout area, we had enough room to do some sort of fun furniture like an air hockey table. Usually, these can be hard to work into design since they are bulky and let’s face it, not super attractive. BUT, I was able to find an air hockey table and shuffleboard today with great style!
Another important feature to basement style is greenery! Greenery always adds a natural feeling and warmth to a space. I suggested different ideas in the two mood boards below: either hanging plants or a fiddle tree, with smaller plants on the TV stand.
Which basement bonus room mood board do you prefer?!
Space 2: Man Cave
The second space in the basement that I designed was a designated home office/man cave. I wanted this space to be really sophisticated but still fun and personalized! The way to achieve that was through stylish furniture pieces and thoughtful wall decor. We chose a darker paint color for the walls – SW Rare Gray. Dark and moody offices are having a moment and they can be absolutely stunning if done well. In a home office, I also love the idea of built in cabinets/bookcases for storage and painting those the same as the wall color. Courtney at A Thoughtful Place recently did this in her new home, which you can see here. Another one of my go-to’s for inspiration, Studio McGee, did this in their home office here.
For wall art, I love to find prints on Etsy. In these man cave mood boards, I did a combination of personal sports and Star Wars art. Both of these are things I’m still working on incorporating well into my own bonus space! You can check out my bonus room mood boards here.
Space 3: Home Gym
Lastly, this home had a dedicated home gym. Which, let’s be honest, is amazing in our current climate! I have a small workout area in my home office where I keep my Peloton bike, but I would so love a dedicated room in a basement (if we had a basement – it would be SO much cooler!). Since this is in the basement, and has no windows, I wanted to keep it light and bright but also modern and a little bit dramatic. The way I achieved that was keeping the walls SW Pure White (and there was already one fully mirrored wall), but then doing an accent wall! I love the idea of doing something dramatic in a home gym – just a space you can have fun with! For the accent wall, I chose SW Inkwell (the same color as my powder room vanity – an amazing dark, almost black, navy) and then a huge motivational wall decal! I also wanted to incorporate a lot of greenery to make sure the space felt really natural. This is one of my favorite small “home gym” inspiration pictures and I think it’s because of how natural it feels!
The basement designs above are from my 2D Full Room Mood Board design service package!
I offer 4 e-design and 3 in-person design packages ranging in price from $75 to $375! All packages include full accessibility and communication with me as well as unlimited revisions!
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