opinion please
 

I was just wondering how many of you have your sewing studio in your basement. Also how many of you do not have windows in your basement area? I am going to need to set up an extra area in my basement and wondered how to make it more cheery. I have my main sewing up area in a small extra room up stairs. But will need a larger area for quilting and storage. So this is why I need the space in the basement. My basement is very dry so there is no moisture problem.:)

When we lived in Massahusetts my sewing "room" was a closet in the basement. It was the family room, and I could have the television on while I was sewing. We had small windows, but I know what you mean when you say it needs to be more cheery. I would put some nice pictures in there. Our local mall has inexpensive paintings of the ocean and other things. Have fun.

Put in lots of lights and paint your walls light colored and put down light colored flooring. Than hang favorite scenes all around along with your quilted wall hangings. It will turn into your favorite space just like that! :)

Thanks everyone for the great ideas. I am loving these. Please keep them coming.

It sounds like it needs an attic windows quilt with an outdoor picture on your wall!

Mirrors are a great way to add the illusion of space & brightness.

you can build a frame that looks like a window and put a mirror behind it to reflect light. or you can make a light box that looks like a window. then put some pretty quilted curtains or valance on it. that way, it won't feel like a room in the basement. you can use a light colored concrete paint on the floor, too. or even paint a design that looks like a quilt on the floor.

Yep!

also, find a window frame and place it ona mirror. Make some cute curtains and hang. Fun!

When I was in Virginia, my sewing room was in the basement. I had White ceiling, white and blue speckled floor and lots of lights!! Mine is now on the second floor of my current home and although it is much more roomier - not as bright!!

Oh - you might want to think about a dehumidifier if your basement is at all damp. We actually ran one right outside my sewingroom door - really helped keep the mustiness out of the fabric.

If you can modify the lighting, LED lights have come down in price a lot, and they produce a natural, "sunny" colored light that doesn't distort other colors. I would start there, and also with a very pale or pastel color on the walls.

My sewing room is in e basement and we're midway through finishing it. We did insulation and drywall, and we painted a generic pale color we had on hand, but my plan is to paint it a Caribbean-type blue this winter and to add lots of lighting when we do the drop ceiling. We have a sliding glass door that let's in some sun, but the "patio" (aka cement slab! 😉) is covered, so most of the sun is blocked.

Happy paint and good lighting, and you won't even be able to tell it's a basement!

My sewing machine set up is on the main level of my home but my stash, cutting area and serger is in my basement. The few windows down there are behind a wall that hides the water tank, pump etc. There is a small window in my stash room that is almost at ceiling level. It is often blocked by my cat lying in front of it. It actually works well as we have a ping pong table that I can use for laying out and or basting my quilts. There is plenty of room to set up a quilting fame and there is a large TV I can watch while doing any of those things. It is cool in the summer and with the help of our woodstove it can be warm in the winter. The only disadvantage is that there is no bathroom on that level.

I recommend natural spectrum lights, as much as you can. I think part of the "gloominess" of sealed rooms is the light wavelength - our brains know when it's wrong! You could even do faux windows - set up light boxes on the walls with natural spectrum lights and put light curtains over it to hide the fact that they go nowhere but still let that "natural" light filter through. Might help fool you into feeling a little less underground!

Just take into consideration what your basement is like and see what works best for you. Great suggestions from this board all the time.!

I'm in the basement right now as that is where our offices are. I have no windows in my corner but the cement blocks and ceiling are painted white and we have the shop lights above each space with the regular lights. And pictures and posters on the walls with some decorations on the top book shelves and filing cabinets. Nothing on the cement floor...just never got that far.

I have had my sewing room in the basement for about a year. I have two very small windows that let in some light. We are going to drywall and make it more of a room and put in a lot of overhead lighting. I'm going to paint the walls a cherry lemon yellow on the top and mint green on the bottom for more light. I love the space and I can have my laptop and TV down there to keep me company. Our basement is very dry also and the only thing I haven't decided on yet is the flooring. I have carpeting on that half of the basement right now that we took out of our family room when we put in hardwood. What do most of you have on the floor? I don't just want to paint the concrete because that's too cold for me.

I have "industrial/hotel/motel" grade (short pile) carpet over bare concrete. It's been down for over 20 years and is still "respectable"

Much nicer on the feet than a hard surface. Pins are fairly easy to find on it, too - if one bends over to get them right away!

It will melt if a hot iron gets on it for more than a few seconds. (I don't want to share how I know that!)

Wow -- there are a lot of good suggestions here -- I almost wish I had a basement! It sounds like you will be able to lighten your area and make it really homey. Post pictures of your work in progress.

Make yourself some faux windows with clear strand lights (Christmas lights) behind and old window that's been frosted.

Love this idea.

Make a big beautiful light colored quilt to hang on the wall....use bright colors or make sunflowers.Of course have the walls painted a nice light color. Use fluorescent lights.

We divide our time between two houses. In one house I have my sewing room at ground level with a big window and the room opens into the main part of the house. I can sew in there all day without a tv, radio or any distraction. In our other house my sewing room is in the basement. It is a large room with finished walls, ceiling and floor and a small window but I feel so isolated in there that I have a tv and radio just to remind me that there is a world out there. You might want to consider this when setting up your room.

I have a basement sewing room . Lots of reasons I like it in the basement... I have lots more room. None of my bedrooms has as much space. I can make the biggest mess and its out of sight. I had tons of fluorescent lights put in so its it brighter than daylight. Its also cool in the summer, and in the winter I use a space heater to supplement. I do run a dehumidifier in the summer to keep the moisture to a minimum. One other consideration... the weight of the fabric is not a concern in the basement.
I do have a TV and radio so its not so silent. One thing I do wish I had done was put a handsink in , but I can still add that.

I don't handle windowless spaces well. I have claustrophobia. My sewing room is an upstairs corner bedroom with 2 windows.

My main sewing area is in my basement. It is big enough that on Mondays I have 5 other quilters come over and we quilt together. They can take their projects home with them or leave them for the next week. My area has carpeting on the floor, two small basement windows. I have lots of ceiling lights. During the week this is my quite area. I love my basement area!

Who has a basement? ha, I'm in Fl.

I have my fabric, books, and magazines in the basement and it causes me no problems. My basement is water proof and does not smell musty. I sew and iron in one room and have some fabrics and UFOs in there. I have my large cutting table in another bedroom and some boxes of fabric. Mostly kits. bought or made by me.

My studio is totally underground also. No windows. I did have extra ceiling lights put in and use the squiggly blubs in them. The ceiling is white and the walls are "reisling" a very pale green. White tile on the floor. has worked out great. allthough, I find I am taking more breaks to come upstairs to the sunlight. But then I am right back to my sewing machines.

My daughter had a galley kitchen without a window. We solved it by hanging a mirror in a window frame (check Home Goods or Hobby Lobby). A valance or side curtains could be added to the mirror. It's an illusion that has fooled a lot of people!

Checked Hobby Lobby online and there weren't any window framed mirrors, but check:

https://www.etsy.com/search?q=window...=most_relevant

My husband got me new lights at lowes. 69.00. They are really nice and led lights. I had shop lights for years but they kept fluttering or burning out. However make sure you get the ones that say daylight or bright white otherwise they are too dull for a sewing room. painted my walls white and hung wall hangings and bright pictures from a quilting calendar.

You can also get light bulbs in 'daylight' spectrum - even fluorescent. I have added these to my basement quilting area and I really like them :)

If you don't have a moisture issue, then it will work out. Even if there is slightly higher humidity, a dehumidifier can take care of that too.

When we still lived in our house, I had a sewing area set up in the basement, but since we had a raised ranch, I had 3 full size windows, since the basement was only half underground. I had lots of light, even when we put in an A/C unit, lots of space and could look outside to watch the kids play in the street and see the world go by. I really, really miss it, especially my former dining room/kitchen table which was huge with all the leaves in it. Boy I miss that table, it was great for sewing, I had plenty of room to support the quilt when quilting, and a great space for cutting and sandwiching quilts. If you don't have decent size windows, then I would paint the walls a light color, set up a wall as a design wall for your quilts and add great posters to look at on the wall, plus I'd leave room for a portable TV, so if you are into Soaps, you won't miss them while quilting.

Get a shadowbox frame...put a night light (single light from a Christmas candle) inserted in the back...attach a pretty poster of an outdoor scene to the glass...when lit, it will look like the outdoors...you can also buy these already made...much more fun & less costly to do yourself. Even an old window, with separated panes of glass will work...just add a strip of wood around the back of the frame (does not have to go all around, you can leave part of the top and bottom open. You just need enough room to insert the light so it does not touch the print.

These ideas sound awesome. I sew in my basement, but it's unfinished and kinda dusty. I keep stuff covered but it's big and I have cable tv down there. It's also nice and cold in the summer, but it's also pretty cold in the winter too.

My studio is in our basement, too. We have a daylight basement, which means it's about half underground (in the front) and opens to the back yard. It is in the mostly-unfinished portion of the basement, with the wreckroom (family room) taking up 2/3 of the lower level. There is one small window at the ceiling over my cutting table and a regular sized window at the other end of the room in the laundry area. When I'm working in there I'm usually so engrossed in what I'm doing I don't notice windows (or lack thereof). We do have good lighting from one end to the other.

I'd love to paint the concrete floor someday, but it's OK for now. I do plan to hang some fabric "walls" in front of the under-stair storage, which will both lighten that area and, since I will sew pockets on it, I'll have some storage for extra notions.

Sometimes I get envious of those who have beautiful big windows and walls in their studios, but then I remind myself that I am very blessed to have the space I do have. Many have to scrounge a corner of a room or put their machines on kitchen or dining room tables and haul stuff around every time they want to sew. I'm somewhere in the middle and am happy, happy, happy.

Sewing areas
 

My sewing studio is in the basement, walk-out level of the house. The room is half spare bedroom and half sewing studio. The lighting comes from the northeast so I rely on extra artificial lighting. I store my fabric in one of the large louvered closets where I have a removable plastic shelving system (from Walmart -type store). There was carpeting on the floor and we kept it.The room is pretty dry.
I needed more room since I saw that I was collecting a lot of extras, so these past several weeks I converted our gas furnace/water purifying system) room to an overflow room. It is right next door to the bedroom/sewing studio. We painted the one block wall with a sealer/primer paint, as well as the other walls of sheetrock. Pure white. DH put up pure white fluorescent fixtures, the light vinyl floor was scrubbed with chlorine bleach solution. A very bright room, nothing fancy but lots of storage. There's a de-humidifier in there going all the time during this summer weather. There are two movable shelving systems holding UFOs, scraps of different sizes, all Batik, flannels, specialty fabs, knitting yarns, and on and on. I even moved the storage stacked drawers which hold notions to that new room. All plastic bins are labeled. This room isn't heated, but I don't intend to be in the room for any amount of time other than to get one thing or another. It's not a fancy finished room, but it's bright, clean and it gives me so much extra space to store ONLY sewingknitting supplies. I was able to downsize a lot of unnecessary items and store all Christmas and seasonal stuff in the garage. It was a big job, but now the sewing room is tidier and more conducive to a spare bedroom. I can see what I have, too. Good luck! I'm sure you'll be amazed at what extra room you can find and arrange.

I also have my sewing /quilting rooms in the basement. I have the walls painted light cheery yellow and put up 2 48" shop lights with daylight bulbs over my quilting area, as well as over my sewing area. Plenty of light.