Some people will have owned their basement for many years and never thought of using for any other purpose than storing gold junk. Other people will conversely be very keen on making full use of this great under-ground room. However when it comes to decorating your basement, you will need to treat it very differently from other rooms in your house. The main reason you need to do this is because basements are underground whilst other rooms aren’t. Your bedrooms and living rooms will probably be getting plenty of light so you can get away with certain decorating technique you might not be able to in your basement.

Think about light.  Basements as you know are naturally very dark places. If you are lucky enough to have a window in your basement then this will help considerably. However if you have a basement with no access no any natural daylight then this often causes problems. In order to get enough light so that you can carry out your desired tasks, you will need to buy various forms of artificial lighting. These might come in the form of table lamps, floor lamps and wall lights. However you don’t want to make the lighting situation worse but using the wrong paint colour on your basement walls.

Reflecting light.  You should have been taught at school about how black absorbs lights whilst white reflects light. This lesson is very important when decorating your basement. Because of the scarcity of light in your basement, you will want to make full use of light as you can. This means that you should paint your walls and ceiling a shade of white. This will allow the light to bounce about your room making the fullest use of lighting possible. If you have very dark walls and ceilings, you will notice that when switching your lights on, there is nowhere near as much light as you might have expected. This can be a bit depressing, especially if you need a good source of light to be able to find things, read a book or do some close-up work. Dark colors just aren’t worth the effort.

Saving on electricity.  Making the most of a bad situation is crucial when it comes to decorating basements. You are at a disadvantage from the get go so don’t make matters worse than they need to be. Painting walls and ceilings dark colours will make your basement much more horrible and depressing than it needs to be. A lot of people associate basements with gloom but they don’t automatically have to be like this. If you decide to paint your basement a dark color anyway, you will find that the need for artificial lighting will be much greater. Not only this, but the extra electricity consumption and replacement light bulbs will make it much harden on your wallet. Trust this advice, you will be amazed at how different a room feels.

When dark basements work.  There are many books on interior design and they may well talk about basement design ideas. Who knows what advice they give you, however it will probably be they same as the advice above. Of course you might actually want you basement to be dark, for instance you might be using it as a disco. So in this situation, you can paint it red, black, purple and green if you wish. No one will judge you on this color choice. They’ll probably have had too much to drink to notice anyway!

Pale shades of colour.  If your basement is currently a very depressing color and you want to change this, you’ll be astounded by the transformation that a couple of coats of white paint will do. Of course, you don’t have to choose brilliant white paint. There are shade of white that have a hint of green, yellow, blue or pink. Think about what you like but choose a shade or two lighter than you might normally think of doing. The reason is that it’s very common to choose a color and then decide it’s too dark. Don’t despair if this happens to you. It’s quite annoying but all you have to do is mix in some white paint. Just ensure that you have stirred the paint sufficiently otherwise you could end up with an uneven color on your walls.