You are renovating your house and there is a basement that you don’t quite know how to exploit. Being on a lower level than the ground, it receives less light and is more difficult to ventilate. Not to mention problems like low ceilings, which make furnishing a basement much more difficult . The risk that it will remain semi-unused and around the corner.
Letting go of such an environment would be a real shame. Even with all its limitations, the basement is a great opportunity to exploit. For this reason, we want to recommend a series of rooms to put inside and some ways to make it not only habitable , but even comfortable .. How to exploit a basement
We mentioned above: exploiting and furnishing a basement properly can be difficult. Being an enclosed space, below ground level, it is inadvisable to use it for kitchens and bedrooms. It could also be problematic for a home studio, despite some advice: the absence of natural light makes it more difficult to concentrate and work.
That said, let’s see how to use a basement instead . The room of hobbies and parties
Most of the time, the basement is the room for parties and meetings with friends. When you need to organize an event with many people, you move an extendable table and settle in this environment, usually quite large. It is quite rare for anyone to fully develop this idea, though.
If you want to transform this space into a place for friends and hobbies, decorate it accordingly. Set up an extendable table with chairs; get yourself a small sofa and poufs , to be placed perhaps in front of a television. Assemble shelves and bookcases to have board games, puzzles, video games on hand. Put a small refrigerator in one corner, always with fresh drinks and snacks to enjoy with friends.
To add some color to the walls, hang pictures and posters related to your passions. You are a lover of role-playing games.
Enrich the room with fantasy and urban fantasy images , to stimulate the imagination during the long evenings around the table. The home gym
You want to stay in shape, but you don’t like gyms: you hate the confusion, the queues to use the machines, the people watching you while you work out. If you need to renovate a basement , you could solve the problem and turn it into a home gym all to yourself. The idea is applicable to all disciplines and allows you to train when you want and how you want.
To create your own home gym, get some mats to use for the free body and put them in a corner dedicated to the purpose. Buy a horizontal or vertical weight rack, depending on the type of weights you use and the space available. Arrange it along one of the walls so it doesn’t bother you. Instead, use another wall to mount a mirror to keep an eye on your movements. Finally, fix the machines you plan to use.
The home gym is good for almost all disciplines. If you do yoga or pilates , you can let go of machines and barbells; if you boxing , you can hang a lotto the ceiling. There could be some problems if you practice fencing: you risk touching the ceiling with your sword. The pantry / enoteca
We have dedicated an entire article to wine cellars, essential for those who love wine but don’t know where to put it. If you’re renovating a cool, dry tavern , you may not need it.
Mount shelves designed to store the bottles upside down or in any case tilted: they serve to keep the cork moist. If the renovation is a big deal, consider setting up the thermostat to set the basement temperature separately. In this way your wine will always be at the right temperature, in summer and in winter.
The basement can also become a splendid pantry . Assemble cabinets for different foods, such as vegetables and eggs. Attach hooks to the ceiling to hang salami and cheeses to mature. Before doing this, however, make sure that the environment is dry enough and that there are no mouse nests nearby. The laundry
Speaking of how to use a basement , we cannot ignore one of the least fun uses: the laundry room. Here he arranges washing machine , dryer and drying racks, so as not to always have them at home. Also put the ironing board and some baskets in which to arrange the washed and folded clothes in a corner. To lighten the hours spent ironing, he also sets up a television and a radio. How to light up a basement
The big drawback of this type of environment is the lack of light : the small windows that are there are hardly enough. Also for this reason, their actual habitability is a source of discussion. For this reason, it is essential to inform yourself on how to light a basement . Only in this way will you be able to enjoy it 100%.
The golden rule for dark rooms is to use light colors and mirrors, which maximize natural and artificial light. In addition to this, what other precautions to take while renovating the basement
- Use LED ceiling lights , also suitable for rooms with low ceilings and with excellent performance.
- Insert LED strips and spotlights in corners where no light is coming. This way you avoid having areas completely dark.
- Install a false ceiling with recessed spotlights for uniform illumination. It is a slightly more expensive solution, suitable for basements with a high enough ceiling and to be lived every day or almost.
- Use track lights , which require a fairly high ceiling but no further work.
- Choose lamps that reproduce natural light as much as possible, in order to make the environment more comfortable. To do this, you need bulbs with a color temperature below 3,300 K.
How to furnish a basement How to illuminate a basement is the first big problem, how to furnish a basement and the second. It all depends on the actual height of the room, which can range from 240 cm up to 270 cm . In this second case, the height of the basement is equal to the minimum allowed height of an apartment. You can then furnish it as you would any apartment, without major problems.
And if the basement has a low ceiling
We have already talked about how to furnish a house with low ceilings: read it to get some ideas. But remember that when you need to furnish a basementfor the above reasons, you don’t have to worry about where to put the kitchen or bedroom closet. You can therefore adopt much more relaxed and even cheaper solutions.
- Shelves , which you can place at the height you prefer.
- Shelves : Since they are open, you don’t have to worry that there is enough space to open the doors.
- Pouf , low, comfortable and perfect for evenings with friends.
If you need to renovate your basement in a structural way, you might want to install a small blind bathroom. A convenience, in the long evenings with friends spent watching movies and talking.
