If you are considering finishing your basement and making it into a room in your house that can be used, there are a couple of obstacles along the way. It is common for basements to be both dark and cold which will make them uncomfortable unless you make some changes.
Basements often have little natural lighting or no lighting at all as they are at the bottom of the house and might even be beneath ground level. This means that you will need to figure out how to light your new room so that it is not too dark and hard on your eyes. You might also want to use floor lighting to enhance certain areas of the room and this would especially be so if you were to use your new basement as a game room or movie room.
For instance, track lighting can be used effectively in a basement game room to highlight the pool table, pinball games, or video games and give the room that game arcade feel. Likewise, if you were creating a basement as a family room where you will be gathering to spend lots of family time, bright consistent lights throughout would be your best option. Remodeling a basement is exciting, as you will effectively be adding a new room to your house. Just dont forget to skimp on the lighting!
The other problem you will run into with basements is their temperature. Basements are at the bottom of the house and this means that they will always be colder than other areas. There can be as much as a 10 degree difference between levels of a house and the basement can get downright cold.
When you remodel your basement and start using it as an everyday room, you may find that it needs its own heating system. Basements can be a good 10 to 20 degrees colder than the rest of the house and so heating the house normally may still leave the basement too cold. This means you might have to get an independent heating system just for the basement or some sort of stand alone heater to do the job. With the stand alone heater though, it will mean you will have to wait a while for your new basement room to heat up to a comfortable temperature before you can use it. Unless you want to keep your heater on all the time, heating a basement is always a problem.
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