Frequently Asked Questions About Basement
How to Heat a Basement in Winter
Today, more and more homeowners change the functions of their basement from a storage place into a livable spaces. However, basement usually had a more cold temperature compared with other room inside the house, thus, it’s necessary to make it warmer, especially in the middle of the cold winter season. And here are some tricks and guides that you can follow easily to keep your basement warm in the winter :
Insulate and Seal Open Gaps
This one is the basic yet most crucial part if you want to keep your basement warm. Most of the time, the cold air from outside comes to the basement through any holes, gaps or crack in the walls, windows, door or ceiling. By sealing and insulate them, you can prevent the cold air come through and will bring a significant improvement especially when it done properly.
Add Rugs or Carpet
If your basement using tile, cement or concrete floors, not only those kind of flooring can make your feet feels really cold, those floors also can cause a significant heat lost inside your basement. To solve this problem, rugs or carpet can be a great solutions, especially a thicker ones. Not only it can make your basement floors feel warmer, using carpet or rug can also great for decorative purposes as it can make your basement spaces looks more cozy and comfy.
Use Heater
If you already done above of those tricks above yet your basement still feels very cold, than maybe final solution for your space is by adding extra heater. Fireplace can be a great options, but it’s require a lot of additional works and minor renovating that surely would be costly. A cheaper, affordable and effortless alternative is by using electric portable heater.
How to Make an Unfinished Basement Livable
Instead of using a basement as a storage space, you can make it more useful by turning it into a more functional and livable spaces such as bedroom, living room or a home office spaces. However, finishing an unfinished basement to make it livable can be quite costly and require a lot of works. Thus, you can keep your unfinished basement that ways but still make it cozy and comfy enough as a living spaces, and here’s how you can do that :
Add more Lights
A dark and gloomy basement surely won’t be an ideal place to spend a lot of your time, thus, one of the first and important things you can do when turning it to a living spaces is by adding more lights – both artificial and natural ones. You can do this by adding more windows, or install some additional lighting.
Make Unfinished Walls look Finished
Whether you are using an unfinished concrete, brick or masonry as your basement walls, you can make them feel “finished” just by painting them. To get a best results, using any light neutral paint such as white or very light gray. Rather than installing any additional drywall or finishing those walls, this tricks is surely much cheaper and affordable solutions.
Install Carpet
If your basement already using a completely finished floors such as tile or wood flooring, than you can skip this one. But, if your basement floors is still an unfinished concrete or plaster, than you can installing a wall to wall carpet. By covering the entire basement floors using carpet, not only you can make your basement floors look finished, it also can make you feel comfortable when walking around.