You don’t need much convincing to realize this obvious truth; A common challenge to most basement finishing projects is the height of the low ceilings. Frankly, there is no national builder (and very few local builders) that build houses with future basement finishing in mind.

In addition to your furnace being in the wrong place, poles littering your rooms, and rafters in unfortunate places, this means you’ll have to deal effectively with low ceiling heights.

In a recent article, I suggested 7 top tips for dealing with low ceiling heights (look up “The Ceiling Height Dilemma in Your Basement Finishing Project and Top 7 Tips for Overcoming It”).

Today, we’ll discuss the first tip from that article: Arches.

A creative and effective way to overcome ceiling height limitations in your basement finishing project is the creative use of arches. They will be strictly for decoration (no structural importance), so the type of arch used is completely up to you. We seem to use a basic “flat” arch more than anything else these days (ask your basement design consultant for details on what a flat arch is).

IMHO the most functional application of an arch is to hide a beam in your basement. A low beam on the already low ceiling of your basement is like adding insult to injury.

Take, for example, your 8 ‘basement ceiling (eg, From your basement floor to the floor joists that support your first floor and will be your future basement ceiling). Often when building the house, a beam is used to help support the first story rafters. This is usually done by placing a steel beam perpendicular and under the floor joists. This means your 8 ‘ceiling is now only slightly over 7’ for basement finishing purposes.

Big problem, right? Nobody wants a 7 foot ceiling! However, there is a solution. Most of the time these joists are placed in basement areas with a natural spacing between spaces. In other words, the beam is located where a family room could join a hallway, flexible space, etc.

A good basement finishing designer will come up with a plan that uses this natural separation to your advantage. Once you have an effective space design, all that is left is to add a small arch under this beam. Now instead of focusing on the low ceiling height, you and your visitors “ooh” and “aah” over the arch.

Some basement finishing projects have the addition of a post that supports the beam that supports the first floor (adding insult to injury, THEN kicking you while you’re down!). By creating arches of equal size on both sides of this post, you can re-create an architecturally attractive appearance that will disguise underlying issues.

To see a video collage of this arch and pole solution in action, visit Colorado Basement Finishing TV

The key to remember is that you don’t have to be satisfied with what your original builder left you. By knowing a few effective techniques, your basement finishing project can have all the appeal and style you could dream of.

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