Need Advise-Basement

We are renovating our basement. We removed the appartment and opened it up. Now we need help with Paint colors. I wanted a nautical theme but am not sure what to do. I dont want tan carpet. This will be a game room and tv area. I origionally thought of using green speckled carpet, but not sure if nautical will work with that. Any advice.

Liz

My hubby is big into the nautical theme and has incorporated it into our house. We did white wainscoting on the lower half of the wall and the upper half was sponge painted with a medium marine blue and a light blue. It came out nice and there are several pictures of sailboat theme pictures hanging up. We have hardwood flooring so we didn't have to worry about carpeting, but any green/blue color carpeting would work if you have a neutral color like white in it as well.

Good Luck!

what about the seagrass(?) carpets?

Nautical like boats? (or do you mean more of an 'under the sea' sort of thing?)

If you mean boats, I would say go with a wood floor or a pergo. You can get a really light white washed wood that would be beachy or something darker/distressed to give you an old boat feeling.

For the walls - what about a really light blue? or stripes of taupey shell colors? or what about cream base with boating maps glued to it and then an translucent cream glaze so that the maps are sort of obscured and aged?

I am thinking nautical like underwater theme. I dont think we can do wood floors. can we? Basement. It is a dry one but just wondering if that is a problem.. Any one have wood on their floor. I love all the suggestions.

Liz

http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/design/design_inspiration/factsheets/307.shtml

just ideas for wall/rug coloring. I say stick with blues.

we plan to do laminate flooring in our entire lower level.
But our house is situated very high, so flooding is not a concern.

Ask your neighbors with similar homes.

YOu can do laminate flooring if you put a good waterproofing barrier (plastic padded sheet) under the floor first. We did it over our cement and no problems at all. Homegoods has great nautical accessories. We have a nautical type theme in our office. We had ugly dark panneling and we painted it a very pretty soft skyish blue and the trim we did in a darker blue. We have hardwood floors and we put the seagrass arearug over it. I'll try to post pics. Perhaps give you some ideas.

good luck!
Lora

I don't know if I'd do solid wood flooring in the basement...even if it's fairly dry, I think there's enough moisture to cause the wood to expand.

If you like that look, I'd go with engineered wood.

For a beachy, nautical theme, I like the look of pickled wood...

Like suggested, you can do laminate wood or engineered wood in your basement if you use a moisture barrier and flooding is not a concern. (We are putting engineered wood in our kitchen and decided on it after a LOT of research)

Ok, so under the sea. I still like the idea of the wood. (You never know how fast the theme will wear on you and you will be stuck with blue or green carpeting. I painted my house blue when I first moved in and it got old fast). Plus the wood is ultra durable and will look good way longer than the carpeting will. Not sure how expensive carpeting is but Pergo is about $2/sq foot and it can be installed yourself fairly easily.

Someone above said wainscotting which I think would work really well. Not only for the theme but because if you are using it as a game room and have kids, the wainscotting will protect your walls.

You could sponge the rest of the wall two shades of blue..or maybe a blue and a slightly greenish color. You could paint starfishes/shells, etc.. on your wall. Or if you want to have something a little more adult than you could hang black and white beach prints.



You could put up some shelving and display some large shells too. Or fill up vases with sand and put smaller shells in.