Basements get the furniture nobody wants and the lighting nobody thought about. They end up as the room people avoid. With some care they can be the best room in the house for certain things: films, games, music, a workshop, a den. They are quiet, cool and private.
The walls matter more in a basement than anywhere else, because there are no windows to look out of. What is on the wall is the view.
What makes a basement hard
- Little or no daylight.
- Low ceilings, often with pipes, ducts or beams.
- Damp. Below-ground walls are cooler and can be humid.
- Hard surfaces. Concrete floors and walls echo.
- No view.
What makes it good for art
- No sun. Nothing fades. You can hang your most saturated pieces without worry. See sun fading.
- No glare. No window reflections on a screen or a frame.
- You control the light completely. Art looks its best under light you have placed on purpose.
- Freedom. A basement doesn't have to match the rest of the house. It can have a look of its own.
Two ways to go
Fight the dark
Make the room as light and open as you can. Pale walls, plenty of lamps, and art that brings in light and distance. This suits a basement used as a family room, an office, a guest room or a playroom.
Use the dark
Accept that the room is a cave and make it a good one. Dark walls, low pools of light, and glowing art. This suits a cinema room, a games room, a bar or a music room. A dark basement with good lighting looks deliberate. A pale basement with one ceiling bulb looks like a basement.
Both work. Choosing neither is what fails.
Art that stands in for a window
In a room without a view, a picture with depth does the job of one.
- Landscapes with distance. Mountains, valleys, horizons. Blue Mountain Fog, Star Valley.
- Paths and portals. A picture that leads the eye away through the wall. Lost Forest Magic Portal, Cosmic Deer. See portals and doorways in art.
- Skies and space. A room with a low ceiling gains from a picture of something with no ceiling at all. Light Nebula, Starlight City.
- City streets. A neon street scene with a vanishing point works like a view from a window at night. Cyberpunk Slick Street.
For the fight-the-dark approach, choose pale, bright pieces. Cosmic Deer and Blue Mountain Fog are both light pictures. For the use-the-dark approach, choose dark pieces with glowing colour.
Size and shape under a low ceiling
- Go large. Basements often have long, unbroken walls. Small pictures look lost on them. See why small art on a big wall looks wrong.
- Tall pictures lift the eye. A portrait piece that runs from above the furniture towards the ceiling makes the wall look taller. All our canvases and posters are portrait.
- Keep the usual height. Centre the art at about 57 inches. Don't push it up to fill the wall. With a low ceiling, hanging high makes the ceiling feel lower still. See the 57-inch rule.
- A row of matching pieces along a long wall gives rhythm, like windows.
- A tapestry covers a big wall for little money and softens the sound. Ours go up to 104 inches wide in landscape. See the tapestry size guide.
Light is the main thing
Art in a room with no daylight is only as good as the lamps.
- Use several sources. One ceiling fitting gives flat, gloomy light. Add wall lights, floor lamps, table lamps and strips.
- Light the walls. A lit wall makes a room feel larger. A lit ceiling with dark walls makes it feel like a box. Aim lights at the art.
- Picture lights and spotlights. A small LED spotlight on each main piece gives a gallery effect that suits a basement well.
- LED strips behind a canvas give a halo. See how to light wall art with LED strips.
- Bulb colour. For a room that should feel like daytime, use neutral white, around 3500K to 4000K, with a high colour rendering index (CRI 90 or more) so that colours look true. For a den or cinema room, use warm white, about 2700K.
- Dimmers. Bright for cleaning and games, low for films.
If you use coloured light, remember that it changes every colour in the art. Keep at least one white source on the main piece.
Damp
This is the practical risk. Check before you hang anything you care about.
- Measure it. A humidity meter costs very little. Art is comfortable at roughly 40 to 55 percent relative humidity. Above 60 percent for long periods, mould becomes likely.
- Run a dehumidifier if the reading is high. It helps the whole room.
- Leave an air gap. Don't press art flat against a cold outside wall. The rubber bumpers on the back of our canvases hold them slightly away from the wall, so that air can pass behind.
- Prefer inside walls to walls with earth behind them.
- Keep art off the floor. Don't lean a canvas on a concrete floor.
- Check behind pictures twice a year for marks or a musty smell.
If the basement is truly damp, with water marks, a musty smell or visible mould, deal with that first. In the meantime, hang only things that are easy to replace or to wash. A polyester tapestry can go in the washing machine. See canvas care: cleaning, sunlight and humidity.
Hanging on basement walls
Finished basements usually have drywall on a frame, and you hang as you would upstairs. Bare concrete or block needs masonry fixings, hardwall hangers or a hanging rail. See hanging art on brick, concrete and plaster.
Sound
Hard basements echo. Fabric and soft surfaces help: a rug, a sofa, curtains over a blank wall, and tapestries. A large tapestry on the wall behind the seating takes some of the edge off. It won't soundproof the room, and it does make it more pleasant to sit in.
By use
- Cinema room: dark walls, dark matte art on the side and back walls, nothing bright beside the screen.
- Games room: neon and space art, LED accents. See game room and den wall art and the console gaming corner.
- Home office: pale walls, neutral white light, a landscape with depth on the wall you face.
- Guest room: calm, pale art and warm lamps. See guest room art.
- Music room: see desk setups for music producers.
Colour on the walls
- Pale: warm white or a soft light colour, in a matte finish. Brilliant white can look grey and cold under artificial light.
- Dark: navy, charcoal, deep green or black, with bright art and focused light. See wall art for dark walls.
- Paint the ceiling and any exposed pipes one colour, so that they recede.
Browse the canvas art and tapestries collections.