Basements are part of a house that is underutilized. They can be so much more than storage and mechanical rooms. It’s a multipurpose space that incorporates several areas into one area, like using a bar, a home theater, a kitchenette, and a playroom. Often, we add an additional bedroom and bath for guests, and we do specialties like adding an exercise and weights gym, a sauna, wine cellars, and design specific to showcase sports themes or collections.
At Pinnacle, we like to say that we bring basements to a higher level, and we do that by creating an inviting space that’s just as nice as the rest of your house. We suggest using the same materials and trim work to extend the main living area to your basement. Going below ground doesn’t mean you’re using subpar materials. We like to use granite and ceramic and do detailed woodwork just like we would in the main living area of your home. The staircase is the first element to extending your living area to the basement. using high-end carpet, wainscoting, and decorative spindles can help with this. We like to open up the wall at the bottom portion of the stairs to create a nice open feeling.
When remodeling a basement, the most common requests are installing a kitchenette, a bar area, and a home theater. Having a refrigerator, microwave, sink, maybe a drawer dishwasher, and cabinets for storage makes the space practical and omits to need to carry glassware, food, and beverages from the first floor. We always try to incorporate this so clients can entertain and not make multiple trips up and down the steps. Some bars we have built our pub-like with built-in foot rails and beer taps and use rich dark wood tones, and others are more like hotel bars with a sophisticated style. We always like to incorporate a TV behind the bar that shows the same feed as what’s on the main TV, so there are multiple viewing areas within the basement. An added design element is lighting underneath the bar and uplighting on glass insert shelves to highlight bottles.
To make the most out of the space, sometimes we will add tiers of seating in a theater area, and we almost always incorporate a bar behind a sofa that’s used for additional seating, or it’s a great area to set out a spread of food. This is a good opportunity to create texture through stonework, decorative tile, or reclaimed barn woods.
To keep a spacious basement area, you want to avoid walls that leave the support columns in unsightly places. We do our best to incorporate them into features like a bar viewing area, as you see here.
Basements are ideal for home theaters, and we’ve installed up to 100-inch screens and luxury leather reclining seating. No matter the theater size, we focus on key elements like surround sound, low voltage accent lighting, various room lighting options, and installing sound insulation to prevent sound from disrupting the rest of the house’s main living area. Basements are great for unsightly gaming tables like ping pong, billiards, pinball machines, or poker tables. Because of their large size, it’s important to know what you want to feature in your space before the design begins. Sometimes these areas start off as playrooms for younger children and later become an area for air hockey or pool tables as they grow.
So it’s important to know what you want to use in your space so that a designated area can be left for these large items. Featuring several different areas in one space while still leaving room for mechanicals, the electric box and storage area require a lot of creativity, but Pinnacle loves the design challenge and has proven to deliver fantastic award-winning basement remodeling in Lancaster, PA, over the years. If you’re interested in remodeling your basement, please call us today, and we’ll be sure to get a meeting set up with you.