
Painting your basement can have a major effect on how the space looks and feels. It’s astonishing what a fresh coat of paint can do when attempting to spruce up a room, and your basement no different. Unfortunately, bringing a basement to life can be somewhat more difficult than other rooms in your home.

Numerous basements are just utilized as storage areas, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to use your space as a home office, a basement gym, or a room your whole family can enjoy?
Below are some photos of a recent basement project our team at Don of all Trades Professional Home Maintenance Services completed along with our 6 painting tips that we hope will inspire and help to make your basement a friendly and happy place.
Tip 1- Use Lighter Paint Hues
This isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Locate the places that get a lot of natural or artificial light and paint these areas with lighter colours. The whole point here is to focus on the areas that are already accepting light and keeping the lighter paint colours out of the darker regions of your basement.
Tip 2- Use Rich Colours
Applying rich colours will help give your basement an “open” feel. Numerous homeowners aim to achieve this with light colours, for example, white or yellow, however using a richly saturated paint choice like a Benjamin Moore Interior Latex Pearl Base Paint in Whale Gray Colour code# 2134-40 can be more effective than choosing an poorly saturated yellow paint as an option.
Tip 3- Reduce the Number of Colours
Using a large number of colours can overwhelm your room. Interior designers suggest utilizing the 60-30-10 standard to shield your room from having an excessive number of colours.
- 60% of the room should be the dominant color.
- 30% should be the secondary color.
- 10% should be used for accents.
For this project we made it simple. 2 colours were chosen to paint this basement space. A Pearl base Whale Grey hue for the walls and Semi Gloss White Interior paint for the ceilings and trim. White window treatments were used as accents to finish off this now organized, fresh and clean space.

Tip 4- Add Extra Lighting
Light helps give the illusion that a room is bigger (and much cleaner) than the actual space. You can easily create this effect by incorporating a table or floor lamp. Track lighting or lights suspended from your ceilings can also be a simple and affordable approach to include extra lighting.
A basic and affordable solution to expand the light in your basement space is through the use of mirrors. Mirrors help “ricochet” the light around the room and give the illusion the space is larger.
For this basement painting project, the home owner decided to keep all original light fixtures and pot lights but decided to replace existing light bulbs with Ecosmart 60W Soft White LED Light Bulbs. The EcoSmart A19 8.5-Watt LED Light Bulb can be used to replace a traditional 60W incandescent A19 light bulb. This LED light bulb has an output of 800 Lumens and can last up to 10,000 hours, saving you up to $56.65 per bulb over the bulb’s life. The bulb is designed for indoor use and features an A-line shape and medium base. EcoSmart A19 bulbs are perfect for your living room, bedroom, kitchen or any place in your home where you would use a standard incandescent light bulb. These bulbs give off a lot of light and were the perfect solution to brighten up this basement.

Tip 5- Select A Glossy Finish
Because basements have a tendency to be damp, glossy finishes are an excellent paint choice and more suited to resist stains and moisture. Remember to make sure your walls are smooth and clean before you apply the paint as glossier finishes tend to show imperfects more than other paint finishes.
