Basement Decorating: Keeping Things Light

One of the first things that you can do is to bring a lighter color to your walls. Since dark colors absorb light they make a room feel dim and closed in. By painting your walls light colors, you take advantage of any light that is in the room. The light surfaces reflect the light and bounce it throughout the room. Wash your walls in light colors to brighten up the room, and if you want to add any bold or saturated colors to the area, you can do that in your accent pieces like pillows, throw rugs and accessories. Just by lightening the color of the walls, you will open up the entire space making it feel larger than it actually is.

The next thing that you want to do to keep your basement room from feeling like a cave is to add plenty of natural and artificial light to the area. Think of having at least four light sources in your room, not including the tiny basement window. If your walls are a dark color, you will need even more light sources to add vibrancy to your room design. Ensure that you have good, overhead lighting, and then make sure that you have ample task lighting. Find lamps for tabletops and floors to spread light throughout the room exactly where you need it the most. To keep the room design looking balanced, make sure that the heights of your table and floor lamps are approximately the same. Keeping lamps a similar height will also ensure that you get more even lighting from them.

Another thing that you can do to bring more light into the room is to reflect as much light back into the room as possible. When you hang a mirror across from a window, you draw the light from the window into the room, and then reflect it back into the room. Couple that with light colored walls, and you can bounce light throughout the room making it feel light and airy. A mirror will not only look great hanging on the wall, but it should help out the functional design of the room too. In addition to mirrors, metal wall art with shiny surfaces, such as silver metal wall decor, will add sparkle and brightness to the basement space.

Most basement windows are small, and they are really only meant for ventilation. Of course you can maximize the amount of light that comes in through the windows by lightening the walls and installing mirrors in the room, but the window is also important for providing a view, even if it is only a glimpse, of the outdoors.

To really amplify what these tiny windows bring into the room, you can measure the inside surface all around the window and have mirror cut to fit that dimension. Then use mirror tape to attach the mirror pieces all around the window, and you will pull as much light as possible into your bright basement room.