So I recently convinced my mom to start redoing the basement so it could be a kind of hangout room (I'll be 21 next week), and she kinda left it to me to pick out some of the things. So over the past two days, my friend (who is an electrician) put in recessed lighting throughout the basement (got LED retrofit light trims from Home Depot for about $17 each and they light up the room great). My current quarrel with him is what type of lighting to use above the bar. It's already wired to be separate from the other lights and has a dimmer, and he put in two 4" boxes above the bar. My friend keeps insisting to hang pendants, along with highly recommending that my parents replace the Federal Pacific circuit breaker panel the house has. My concern is that there isn't enough height. The basement is 84" from floor to ceiling, with about 40" from the bar top to the ceiling, and I don't want to be sitting there and have a fixture in my face. I went to IKEA to look for lights and saw they had mini recessed lights (3" diameter; called Blixt) and I really liked them. They also sell LED bulbs to replace the halogen ones and on their display they looked great. So that's why I would like some feedback from you guys on whether I should agree with him and do pendants, or have the boxes that were already put in removed and get the mini recessed lights instead. If the verdict is pendants, I also saw a 5" one (called Basisk) that I'd probably go with. Or please suggest anything else that you guys think I should consider.


Here's what the basement looks like now (the wire in the middle is from a projector that was hung up a long time ago). As you can see, my grandparents did a great job with the styling back when they lived in the house . Still have to get rid of a ton of stuff, get flooring, and either paint the paneling or put up sheetrock (that will be my dad's call). There will also be a hanging light on the right side where a table will be set up.



The mini recessed lights:


The pendant I saw:

 

Forget about the pendant I posted. Decided it's too basic and I'll instead be looking for something of more of a brown color.

 

You should use a light bar... get it?

Recessed ftmfw

 

Wait.....mom's basement

 

Well, my parents' basement. I'm in school and still have another year to go, and commute from home. They had to sell the house we had in South Jersey after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the area. With that recent sale, and that my dad just got a better job, she agreed that we should make the basement into better living area than just a place to keep all of our junk. Can't really make a decision on the bar lighting until I know if we're gonna paint/ what color to do it. My dad's last suggestion was to put up sheetrock instead of the paneling. He still doesn't know that the recessed lighting was put in while he was away for job training, so whether the sheetrock idea was sarcastic or not isn't clear to me yet lol. Flooring is going to be another task, as my mom is thinking of doing sheet vinyl (basement flooded once years ago so she's scared of laminate getting ruined). Went to Lowes last night and the guy showed me plank vinyl flooring that locks together and could go right over the existing floor. Seemed like a great idea since reviews say it was easy enough for a DIY weekend project as you don't need glue or a base layer under the vinyl, but my mom's skeptical.

 

Christmas lights.....to go with that Christmas tree theme you got going

 

On a serious note....ceiling looks really low for pendant lights.

Do you really need lights directly over the bar? It looks like the existing recessed down lights provide plenty of lighting as it is.

Spend your money on other cool stuff....flooring, bar stools, shelving for your booze collection.

..and hang the retro Lamborghini picture while you are at it. :wink:

 

Well we planned out lighting over the bar for like if people are watching a movie (we'll get a couch and big ass TV down there at some point after the rest is taken care of) but there needs some kind of dimmer lighting over the bar for people sitting there, or just if we're sitting at the bar and don't need the whole place lit up. The ceilings are pretty low which is why I'm so hesitant about pendants and how they'd probably only hang about a foot from the ceiling. Worst case scenario we take out the boxes in the ceiling, patch up the holes, then cut 3-inch holes in the patches for those mini recessed lights. There were two tracks for lighting before along with tons of marks everywhere so the ceiling will have to be painted no matter what. And I plan on making a little display for booze. Saw an idea on Pinterest to have a long, shallow box with a glass top and an LED strip inside. I'll get to that eventually.

By the way, my dad must have had those pictures from when the basement was his room years ago. I don't have the picture of the one that says "Body by Lamborghini, High Fidelity by Alpine". But these are the others I found:

image by miccris93, on Flickr

image by miccris93, on Flickr