Another space in our basement vacation rental is finished! It’s packed with basement master bedroom design ideas I want to share with you. Spoiler alert– The main takeaway is don’t overlook the basement to use as a vacation rental. Regardless of how awful you think it may be, there is potential for it to blossom into something amazing!

The Basement Bedroom Before


This basement bedroom wasn’t exactly giving the “let have guests over” vibe eh? After having a flood last year, we stripped away the lower half of the drywall, all of the flooring, and spent months drying it out. I wasn’t very hopeful it would ever be a usable space again.
Basement Master Bedroom Ideas

As you can see from the before photo the room was long and narrow. We were able to split the room in half to create two decent size bedrooms. However, cutting it in half meant doing some space planning to maximize living and storage space.

Unfortunately, this room is where all the plumbing for the home comes in and out of, so we had to do some handy work to disguise a lot of pipes. If you look back to the before photo you’ll see our reason for placing the closet where we did. It not only makes storage space but helped conceal the plumbing.

Basement Bedroom Walls

I was happy to partner with Interbois to create this basement vacation rental. Using shiplap not only elevated the aesthetic of the room but saved so much time, that would have otherwise been spent doing drywall repairs. The walls are done with 7-7/8″ Shiplap (this is about 2″ wider than other shiplap products on the market), it looks like it was custom made.
Tutorial: How To Put Shiplap on Basement Walls

Adding the Architrave to the top of the shiplap wainscotting added a bit of contemporary flair.

The Best Flooring for a Damp Basement

I wish I would have done some research the first time for the best flooring to put in a basement. For this basement renovation, I chose Charcoal Oak vinyl plank flooring from Golden Select. It is ideal for basements as it can be applied directly to a concrete floor, has an attached 1mm underlay, and is fully-water resistant! It went down so easy, I did this room completely by myself, with no prior experience, so I’m confident you could too.

Applying the Golden Select floor was my first job as I didn’t plan to use baseboard over the shiplap. If you are using a combination of drywall and baseboard, I’d save the flooring job for last.

The Basement Wallpaper

The wallpaper used in this basement master bedroom is Watercolor Floral Bouquet from RoomMates Decor. I’ve used this brand of paper before and I love how easy it goes up, plus the pattern repeat is small so there isn’t a lot of wastage.

I must say using a combination of shiplap and wallpaper is one of my best basement master bedroom ideas! You see, the bottom half of the walls were only partial drywall (because of the flood), so the shiplap easily concealed that mess. The top half of the drywall wasn’t in the best shape either. A poor crack fill job, uneven spaces, tiny gaps. The wallpaper hid it ALL, you’d never be able to tell now!
Basement Master Bedroom Lighting

It’s no secret, basement rooms typically feel like a dungeon. I wanted this room to feel bright and airy, despite only having a tiny window. The chandelier I chose from Dainolite not only adds some serious class, but it also has 8 LED bulbs that give a lot of beautiful light in the space.

The Special Touches

I tried hard to maintain my budget so thrift shopping and making decor items myself was a must. I sewed all the throw pillows, built the end tables from a $19 IKEA shelf, found the lamp and bed on FB and found the other items to decorate the end tables at Value Village.

If you follow along on Instagram you may have seen me doctoring up this sofa. I got it on FB marketplace, it had fallen off the back of someone’s truck, had a broken frame and the arms were missing… buuuut I fixed it up, gave a few spots a scrub, could it fit there any better?!!

The basement ceiling is one of my favourite budget-friendly tricks! Would you believe it if I told you it cost less than $100 and a bit of elbow grease to master this coffered ceiling?


Have a look at the renovation before and after…

A huge thank you to all the sponsors who made this space come together. Disclosure: The products used to complete this renovation were by my request, all thoughts, opinions, and designs are my own.
What are some of your favorite master bedroom design ideas? Let me know in a comment below!

Beautiful. Love the ceilings. Everything came together so nicely. Have a great new week.
Thank you so much Kris! <3
How did you make the white coiffured ceiling in the basement remodel?
It was an affordable DIY. The ceiling was previously strapped, so we just had to reroute the central vac lines up into it. We covered the ceiling in 1/4″ plywood (meranti) and them made beams from MDF. All painted white it looks legit!