The painting, staining, and flooring steps in finishing your basement are crucial to creating a great living space while maintaining good flow throughout the basement. There’s really only one question you need to answer before you tackle this step, “Does it work in this space?”.
The one lesson I’ve learned is that you just can’t go wrong with neutral pallets when picking colors. Why go bold when you may regret it? Stick to the basics and you’ll be happy, as will any possible home buyers in the future. A wrong or funky color choice in your walls or flooring can possibly even decrease the value of some rooms, don’t make that mistake.
That being said, there are times when getting creative and breaking the norms can be the best option. Here are some creative ways to paint, stain, and floor your basement space that are great options:
1) Stain your concrete
– Why deal with carpeting, hardwood, and other options when staining your concrete can look just as good
2) Wallpaper
– This can be a great option if you choose the right wallpaper on the right walls, but don’t go overboard!
Check out my start to finish posts to see what paint, stain, and flooring choices I went with in the end.
Godspeed,
Tony
Shouldn’t the flooring be done first? ie if your doing tile or some type other than carpet or concrete?
Hey Jared, thanks for the comment! I haven’t done a good job completing this page so please stay tuned as I build this out with more information.
I think in every project there will be exceptions to the step-by-step guide I’ve laid out on this site. I think tile flooring and where that falls in the steps could definitely be an exception to that rule. Let me know a little more about your project and I’ll see if I can help answer any questions you might have.
Thanks and best of luck!
Tony – i know you are working on adding this part of the site and look forward to it. you are I live in colorado (i think) and so want to ask about the flooring.
What did you do about subfloor? its so dry here that I think going fancy pants moisture control flooring may be a waste of money. So what did you do and what were you considering when making choices about subfloor?
Thanks!
Michael
Hey Michael!
Sorry for the delayed response here, but yes I do live in Colorado. For subflooring we had a concrete slab foundation so I chose to carpet all of the basement expect the bathroom, which was tiled.
The only prep work we had to do was fill some of the big gaps in the floor with some floor leveling compound. This is something simple you should be able to find at your local hardware store, basically like putty or wet concrete in nature that you use to fill any big gaps or cracks in your floor before you lay carpet.
For the tile we used a simple tile underlayment subfloor. Here’s an example: Tile Underlayment. We laid that directly on the concrete than installed the tile on top.
Let me know if you have any other questions and best of luck on your basement finish project!