Home Improvement, Room With A View
4 DIY Ways to Brighten Your Basement on a Budget
24
Feb
Feb
If the past two years huddled at home have taught us anything, basements can be an excellent living and entertaining place for young and old. More than just a place to store Christmas decorations, basements can serve as a learning space, an office, or family room. Of course, because basements don’t have abundant sources of natural light, you’ve got to bring the “brightness” into the room.
With that in mind, here are our top 4 suggestions to make your basement warm, whimsical and inviting!
Rugs
In any room of the house a rug can spice things up. Basements sport concrete floors, tiles, or plain carpeting. Picking up a rug (or a few) can bring life into an otherwise muted space. Rugs break up large open spaces and keep your feet warm in the winter.
When jumping into a rug purchase, measuring the space is beyond important. Having trouble finding one that will fit perfectly? No worries! When placing a rug, the edges only need to sit just under the front legs of furniture and do not necessarily have to span wall to wall. With that in mind, if certain pieces of furniture don’t sit comfortably on the new carpeting, shift it so they are back on the original flooring. This may seem counter intuitive, but can actually create more depth to the room’s style.
A favorite of rug styling is rug layering. This is a fairly simple concept that can really level up a room. The basics of rug layering are
- Neutral-colored area rug
- Patterns or accent colors
- Changes texture
- Change shapes
- Change sizes
Now these may seem like a lot of options just for a rug, but it allows you to play around with the room! After laying a neutral area rug, choose one or two more rugs of different colors, shapes, textures or sizes. If the base neutral rug happens to be thicker than the layering rugs, keep those rugs within the base’s perimeter. Accent rugs can be a great way to separate different areas of the basement. Whether it is a bedside rug for cold mornings or a desk rug to roll your chair across. A simple way to really warm up that basement room.
Lights
The thing about basements is they are underground, at least mostly. For rooms in general, lighting controls the vibe. Everyone knows fairy lights can give that boho or cottage-core feeling and LED lights give a contemporary (colorful) glow. What everyone might not consider is that simply taking care in choosing the type of lamp, shade, and bulb can be the simplest solution to changing the mood of the room. Especially if you may be stuck with unflattering grade school ceiling tile fluorescent lights.
Lighting is a bit of a trial and error activity. Don’t be afraid to try out different light bulbs and light placements before settling on one. Bulbs range from white to yellow to color changing, and each can be a positive based on how you want your room to feel. Brighter lights are usually good for work spaces or if you need that extra help getting up in the morning, right by the bed. Warmer lights are great for entertaining areas, or a cozier vibe around the bed. If you invest in color changing bulbs, then you already know those are for having a good time!
STRING LIGHTS
- Great for exposed beams. These lights give off a soft glow
- Great when paired with complimentary lamp lighting
- Sometimes hard to plug in and singular bulbs will burn out
LEDs
- Light strips can be stuck to multiple surfaces, giving off dramatic lighting
- Offers options of color and mood
- Can attract light and warmth seeking bugs
YELLOW BULBS
- Warm yellow light
- Often not as bright as other bulbs
- Softer on the eyes
WHITE BULBS
- Brighter light, closer to that fluorescent bulb
- Good for work areas
- Less lamps to get full room illumination
Wall Murals
Whether it be paintings or posters, changing the walls makes the room feel fresh. Painting designs onto walls has become a popular DIY trick for sprucing up a room. That solution is great but can be tough to carry out and requires paint which may be out of the question. Utilizing more temporary solutions is often the easier way to go and better for temporary living situations.
Biggies offers some great wall art options that can bring some life to the room. A favorite decor trick is placing a mural or tapestry and creating a border around it to give the appearance of a framed piece of art.
What you’ll need to accomplish this:
- And old frame or pieces of wood measured to fit the sides
- A wall adhesive (wall tape, screws, etc.)
- Optional: paint, to match the frame to the room
Framing a piece of wall art can amount to one centralized eye grab, or grow to something like a gallery wall. The best part is that it’s easy to update, move, or remove whenever needed.
Window Well Scenes
Being reminded that you are living in a basement every time you try to catch a glimpse of the sun isn’t a great thing. Not necessarily a bad thing either, but there is a prettier solution to this scenario. Biggies creates what can be seen as wallpaper for your window wells. Anything from a casual nature scene to your own tropical getaway right at home.
To install Biggies Window Well Scenes:
- Remove any debris and a few layers of rocks
- Clean to window well walls for a smooth application
- Measure the dimensions and cut your well liner to size
- Attach the scene adhesives to the edges and curves of the well
- Finally, attach your scene to the adhesives, keeping it taut and smooth
Window wells offer a few options for DIY decoration. Placing a scene on the tin can walls is just the start. Consider changing what sits at the bottom of the well. Before returning your original layers of stone to the well after attaching your window well scene, take a look at different options to take that scene to the next level. There are different colored stones and plants great for sprucing up that area. The idea is to really create a view for yourself where there wasn’t one before.
Basement Transformations Made Easy!
Upgrading your basement is often something that people always say they will get around to but is put off. Now is the time to get in there and spruce the place up. Be it you are moving into your parents or you are renovating your own. You don’t need a ton of money or time to make some simple changes that truly take your basement from a simple storage area to your new favorite spot to hangout. Having comfortable well-decorated spaces in your home is an underrated treat that anyone can achieve.
