Basement ceilings: To cover, paint or simply leave be?
Hi all! This week’s Dear Color Crush popped in to my inbox a few weeks ago and I knew immediately that I needed to answer it. I didn’t answer it immediately however! Better late than never, so they say!
Dear Color Crush! My sewing room is in our basement. One wall is cinder blocks; paneling on the other (all painted the same color). The “ceiling” isn’t a ceiling, but the rafters and piping that basically supports the house above. Putting in a ceiling isn’t in the budget. I would like suggestions for painting it. I know the pipes, heating & air ducts, etc will still show, but for all the wood area. Thoughts??
Debbie from Kentucky
Hi Debbie,
Excellent question! And I love it because it’s an excuse to talk more about how to bring color into our homes in non-traditional ways (and - as you might be aware - I’m a bit of a fan of a painted ceiling!). We actually had this exact scenario in our previous house. It was an unfinished basement that we kinda ‘half’ finished, in that we built some interior walls to allow for a laundry room and storage space, but we left the exterior cinder block walls. We didn’t have the luxury of height to put a ceiling in and decided that actually, the space would feel much larger if we didn’t enclose it further by adding a ceiling. And so we painted it. And we painted it black. The whole thing. We didn’t have any duct work in there, but we did have SO much old wiring. It was absurd. Our contractor removed as much as he could, but there was still a lot that couldn’t be removed. So we stapled it all to the beams and then went to town with the paint sprayer. With these few changes our basement went from Home Alone standards of scary to an ok playroom for our kids.
Whilst black does a fantastic job of hiding all those bits you don’t want to be drawing attention to, if you happen to have a ‘cleaner’ situation up there, what’s to say you can’t go in with yellow, pink, blue? I couldn’t find many examples of painted basement ceilings to share with you, but I think these pics are just enough to hint at what could be possible.
Image: The Spruce
Image: Architectural Digest
Image: Lucas Eilers
Image: Architectural Digest
Image: Houzz
Image: Architectural Digest
Image: A Life Unfolding
I hope that’s helpful! And be sure to show what you land on, too!
Any other color questions you want to throw my way? Just send me an email madeline@shapesforthepeople.com
Until next time!