In the past, I’ve worked with the Love Your Neighbor previously on setting up a room in a design house. I loved the experience. I was recently asked again to design a few rooms for Love Your Neighbor, this time it was for a Habitat for Humanity house. The organization goes into Habitat for Humanity homes and furnishes and designs the home so that when the residents move in, they don’t have to have the task of furnishing and putting together a home; It’s designed and ready to go for them! I loved that! I was given the downstairs, and decided to do a cozy basement family room with rust and yellow. Somewhere the young family can hang out, watch a movie and eat popcorn together.
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Many of the furnishings are donated for the space, and then we fill in the rest. For the space, I had a donated leather couch with an ottoman, dresser and side tables to work with. There were also some donated accessories in a warehouse I was able to choose from as well. The rest I found at At Home (Which should really be called overwhelmingly at home, that place is almost too big.). The room is just a plain basement space with old white vinyl tile and a single window. My goal with the tile was to cover it up since there wasn’t a budget to replace it. The first thing I did with help was put down the carpets and position the furniture. You can also see this space in this video, and also see it in the post below.
The leather sectional was perfect for the space and would work well for the young family. The dresser makes a great TV stand and will have extra storage.
The rug to work with for the space was really pretty, but small, so I purchased a larger neutral rug to layer under of it. I grabbed this pic before we straightened it out all of the way.
The ottoman with a tray is perfect for having smaller kids. It’s soft, and the kids can beat it up a little and the leather will still look good. On the back window, I hung a pretty yellow-gold velvet curtain for looks to warm up the space since they had blinds. The pillows feel so soft, like you want to just snuggle in them. Rust colored pillows really warm up a space. I found the really cool jute lamps at At Home. They add such great texture!
In fact, here are a few takeaways for creating a cozy basement room. Feel free to Pin this and save it for later!
The light bulb thing is super important! If your light bulbs are all a different color, it’s really going to change how the room and the colors in the room look. In fact, when I stage a home, it’s the first thing I tell everyone to do! Make sure their light bulb colors and temperatures match!
The far corner was a little awkward. We needed to keep a walkway open to go to the playroom (I’ll share next), so I designed that corner to feel a little artsy.
Hanging the small artwork, the brass elephant statue, and the yucca plant and abstract artwork (by me) with the brass plant stand made it into a little “moment”. It almost feels like a cozy gallery, and uses a space that would just be open. It’s good to have a purpose for open spaces, otherwise they just collect junk. It’s one of my favorite parts of the room, and it made a great place to put a basket for extra blankets and pillows.
Basements can feel really sterile and cold, so bringing in warm colors and textures can really make it much cozier. Even though we had to work with white walls and a very white, old linoleum floor, adding all of those colors and textures help to make it a warm and cozy basement family room with rust and yellow .
