Basement Office Ideas: Light, Wall Color, Desk and Bookcase

MilyaHome Planner Team · June 29, 2022

4 ideas for a basement that gets little daylight and may be damp: light first, then wall color, a desk and a low bookcase. Decor comes last.

Nobody walks through your basement on the way to somewhere else. That makes it a good place to work. It is also the darkest room in the house, and sometimes the dampest, and those two facts decide almost everything you put in it.

These basement office ideas follow the order the work happens in: light first, then the walls, then the desk and the bookcase, and the decor last. They suit anyone who needs a quiet room to work in. That can be someone who works from home, or a student preparing for university exams who needs one place for the books and the stress that comes with them.

How do you turn a basement into an office?

Plan the lighting first, check the room for damp, and only then furnish it. A basement usually gets little daylight, so the lighting plan decides how usable the room will be.

The rest is not difficult. Paint the walls, make a proper entrance, and buy a desk and an ergonomic chair. Add a large bookcase. In a larger room, there is space for a sofa or a coffee table too.

Then choose a style. Two directions work:

• Classic, with wooden furniture. Wood makes a dark room feel warmer. The trade-off: wood is damaged by damp, so first check that the basement is well drained.
• Modern and minimal, with clear lines. A good choice if the room is small and you want it to look calm.

Each of the four ideas below solves one problem of a basement room.

What basement office lighting do you need?

Diffused light, planned before anything else. With little daylight, a basement office is only as useful as its lighting system.

One way to get it is a suspended ceiling with recessed LEDs. The light spreads evenly across the room instead of coming from one bright spot. Plan it for visitors too: if you sometimes invite a client, the room has to look right for them, not only for you.

Which basement office paint colors reflect the most light?

Light ones: sand, pale yellow and white. They reflect the light you have, natural or artificial, and make the room look larger.

Before you paint, check the walls for damp spots. If you find any, treat them first with anti-mold paint, cork or polystyrene foam.

Common mistake: choosing the wall color on its own. The wall color, the furniture and the style work as one, so decide them together.

Color also changes how a room feels to work in. Blue and green are calming, yellow gives energy, and white helps you focus. In a basement, though, light comes first and mood second.

Choose a desk that does more than hold a computer

Bring furniture in only when the basement is dry. Start with the desk. Four types suit a small office:

• A multifunctional desk for a desktop computer, with drawers and shelves.
• A corner desk, if the room has a free corner. Put it against a wall and hang a cork board above it.
• A simple, colorful desk next to a wall board. Use the board for appointments, meetings and deadlines, and for the drawings and pictures that make the work more pleasant.
• A table with a folding top, with drawers and space for a PC, a tablet and a smartphone.

Small basement office ideas: which bookcase fits?

A low one. A bookcase that stops below the ceiling keeps a small basement from feeling closed in.

You need one even in the smallest office. It holds books, manuals and folders, and it makes a desk in a basement look like a real workplace. Look for corner units, or low and wide bookcases that also give you a surface to put things on. They come in four kinds:

• wooden;
• steel;
• closed;
• open.

Modern bookcases with unusual shapes suit an office in any part of the house.

Make it a room you want to stay in

Many people now work from home. Information and communication technology has removed the need to travel to an office every day, and it gives people who prefer to work in the evening the freedom to do so.

Creative people in particular often need a room of their own: quiet, calm and arranged in an order only they understand. If someone in your family works like that and you are choosing a new home, a house with a basement gives them that room. Add a comfortable sofa, and the office also works as a guest room.

It is a small office under the house, but it can still be the place you go to get away from everything else. So do not furnish it only for work. Add:

• works of art and paintings;
• shelves;
• pillows;
• lamps with a design you like.

These are the things that make long hours at the desk less stressful.

Plan your basement office before the work starts

A dark, empty basement is hard to picture as an office. Download Home Planner, draw your basement and plan the office online, and see if you like it before you change anything.

In the app you measure your space and make 2D and 3D floor plans. You then decorate and furnish the room with items from world-famous brands and make visualizations of the result. Ready-made designs for a bedroom, a bathroom or a living room give you ideas for the rest of the house.