3 Interior Designers Transform The Same Basement Rec Room

[Narrator] These three interior designers

have been given a photograph of an empty basement rec room.

They have free rein to design it in any way they please.

My name is Courtney McLeod

and my design style is colorful, joyful, and elegant.

My name is Becky Carter, and my work is highly conceptual,

it is subversive, and it's a whole mood.

My name is Sasha Bikoff,

and my style is luxurious, whimsical, and bold.

[Narrator] No clients, no restrictions, just blank space.

[upbeat music]

My first impression of the room

was hideous soffits [chuckles], not much light.

The question is, what to do

with kind of a generic blank square of a space?

The only thing you wanna put in a basement

is your skeletons

so let's make a space where you're gonna party with them.

[upbeat music]

My idea is really to put something spectacular

on the ceiling in order to draw your eye up.

So I'm going to achieve that design trick

by using one of my favorite luxury materials, gold leaf.

When you put something like this on the ceiling,

all of the light really bounces

and really helps to brighten up the space overall.

It's also a real focal point,

you can't help but just look up at it,

and stare at it, and feel like wow.

I'm going to create an illusion

where our ceiling doesn't even exist.

So I'm gonna get theatrical with it,

and I'm gonna do a tinted ceiling.

This is my fabric for the tinted ceiling,

it's by Dedar, it's not too heavy.

And when you gather the fabric,

you're gonna get all different tones

of that pink with the light.

We have these two small windows

right at the very top of the ceiling.

We're not getting much of a view from them.

I doubt we're gonna get much light out of these,

and frankly, they depress me a little bit.

My recreation of choice is karaoke,

and I just think if there was any reason

to go down into a basement,

it's to hide the world away from my karaoke performance.

So with my ceiling, what I'd like to do is

create an entirely lit ceiling.

The grid is partly inspired by Studio 54.

If you've ever seen their dance floor, it lights up,

and the individual square is all flash and blank.

But what I've done on the edges of the ceiling,

is I've drawn this beautiful curve

that kind of brings the corners down

and softens the boxiness of this space.

Another trick that I'm using is the addition

of a bit of millwork in the form of flat stock

used on the ceiling to create a stepped molding effect.

Now, this adds a bit of dimension

to an otherwise pretty plain space,

and it also creates the opportunity

for a frame around my gold leaf.

[air whooshing] [upbeat music]

What I'd like to do is panel all of the walls

with an upholstered crushed velvet.

So they're essentially gonna be padded walls

that are then painted over the top

sort of inspired by the tattooed villa of Jean Cocteau

where we have these figures sort of dancing

and playing around the room.

And my thinking is, is that if we're singing karaoke,

and there's just one or two of us

I don't ever wanna feel lonely.

My design is starting with the spectacular wallpaper.

It's an amazing print by a company called de Gournay,

and it's actually a hand painted wallpaper on silk.

Now, one of the reasons I want to use this

is to trick the eye and help us camouflage the soffits

that are on either side of the space.

I'm going to totally clad the walls in mirror.

I wanna pick a mirror that's going to work really well

with my tinted ceiling fabric,

so I went with this antique pink mirror.

All these materials cancel out the need

for this light coming through the window.

[upbeat music]

In my karaoke room, I designed this kind of catwalk

along the sides of the walls here

as a place to hop up and perform for your friends,

and you can kind of walk up and down it confidently

while you sing your favorite Gwen Stefani song.

These floors are pretty basic.

So what I'm gonna do here,

because we're a little bit underground

I wanna continue with this cozy cocoon feeling,

and I wanna fully carpet our floors here.

This rug is actually part of my rug collection with rug art

and the design is called wavy.

And what's great about this rug

is that it's a 100% silk, so it's so soft.

In the middle of our rec room

we are putting a beautiful big conversation pit.

Now, I don't think this so much as a conversation pit

as I do think of it as like a sing-along pit.

It just gives a lot of play to the space

in terms of different levels for people

to feel like they can really perform,

and have fun with the space while they're doing karaoke.

So I've decided that the floors in this space

are not going to be a focal point,

and so I'm going to keep it pretty neutral.

I think the ones in the original rendering

are a little bit yellow for my taste,

and so I'm gonna bring in more of a natural white oak

to create a neutral ground for our spectacular area rug.

Now, this is the star and it is beautiful black and cream,

wool, and silk carpet.

So the carpet that I chose for this space

is a lovely dusty rose silk carpet.

And I designed the pattern for this

so that it has a very tiny little diamond geometry in it.

And the scale and the sizing of those diamonds

are very intentional because I wanted it to look like

there's a disco ball sparkling on the ground.

And it's going to be great at the resonance sound,

helping to make it so that this space sounds amazing.

[upbeat music]

My vision is this underground nightclub.

When I was younger and single

they used to call me the queen of the underground.

So it's only natural that I would create

a nightclub in this rec room.

So I kind of wanted to create a seating arrangement

that took over the entire room.

I decided to use one of my favorite sofa designs,

the Archizoom Safari sofa which is a 1970s Italian design.

So the long rectangular shape of this space

it immediately made me think of,

this is perfect for a built-in style sofa

that would be like a U-shape,

and would take advantage of the shape of the room.

I never do white sofas, but I thought this space

could be the perfect spot to try it

and I really want to bring in,

instead of color it's really a focus on texture.

The bar that we're designing,

is this beautiful sort of rounded form

that is clad in a mother of pearl tile.

I wanted it to feel distinctly feminine.

It kind of has this really fun rainbow quality.

The coffee table is this iridescent glass coffee table.

It's kind of disappears within the space,

but it has this rainbow tonality kind of spectrum to it.

So our wonderful sofa

is the perfect backdrop for some really bold pillows.

And so I think it's the perfect spot

to really reinforce the wonderful

red burgundy background of our wallpaper.

The coffee table that I selected

is a spectacular piece from Design Studio apparatus.

So you have this wood, you have brass,

and you have this wonderful kind of frosted material

that really gives a light and airy feel.

On the back bar, I've decided to go ahead

with a stained glass element

and the stained glass is Art Nouveau inspired,

and it's these really soft palettes.

So I'm still kind of keeping it

in this really dreamy pink, yellow, green palette

that you'll see throughout the entire space.

So what would a sexy lounge be without a custom bar?

And so we decided to bring in a bit of a curved shape

that mimics the U-shape of our sofa.

I also thought it would be a great opportunity

to bring in a bit of warm walnut into the space,

and you're also seeing a bit of brass in this piece

to make it really, really glamorous.

The standing table in front of the bar

is just a great conversation area.

So I love the idea of having this kind of

floating piece in the space to create another area

that's perfect for folks to stand around.

For the pillows, I decided to go

with this incredibly fun Pavoni leather.

It is a crinkled chrome leather,

it almost feels like a disco ball.

It also is pretty much waterproof, you cannot mess this up.

If you're having a great time,

and you're spilling your drink all over the place,

these will be fine.

[upbeat music]

The chandelier is very space age,

disco feel, this futuristic feel to it,

but at the same time, it's round pendants

so it could almost feel like a disco ball.

But I love these rods that are in the center of this pendant

that are all these different neon colors.

First, I'm going to obviously light the ceiling,

that's gonna give us our overall lighting,

it's gonna give us a lot of control,

and it will also maybe behave

like a little twinkling Studio 54 or vibe.

Then as we look down the room,

I am putting in sconces around the room.

These are roomlae sconces and what I love about these

is that they are really soft, they're very diffuse.

They feel almost like a beach ball that's been deflated,

or something along those lines.

For my sexy lounge, I'm selecting an amazing fixture

by a studio called Lindsey Adelman,

and it's one of my favorite lighting design studios,

they make just truly functional art.

And this one is from their Cherry Bomb collection.

and I love the blown glass with a bit of gold leaf applied.

The sconces are also bringing in

this kind of space age element,

they're pill shaped, their resin.

And I decided to use them in all different colors

to connect with the pendant light and the coffee table.

On the bar, I have some Robert Kuo table lamps

that I've put on either sides of the bar.

And I love these because they are made

with a silver leaf over the top,

which is going to tie in to the other chrome

and steel elements in the room.

But add just a little bit of luxury.

We're going to have wonderful Arteriors lamps

with custom lampshades.

I'm imagining them being a black silk unlined,

so that it will add drama, but you'll still get

a little bit of light through the lampshade.

[upbeat music]

The final element of the space are these palm fronds,

and they really add this element of glamour,

but it also adds an element of nature.

So in my mind, I'm a fabulous piano player.

[chuckles] In reality, not so much, but one can dream.

And so I thought, okay, sexy lounge,

we have to have a fabulous piano.

And so we picked this color

that is a bit of like a Tiffany Blue with a hint of mint.

I really wanted the piano to stand out

and to be, again, a piece of functional art.

So let's talk about the disco ball.

I decided not to go with a traditional disco ball,

there are no mirrors on this one.

And instead what you're seeing

is a massive hammered chrome disco ball.

[upbeat music]

I really did a good job of transforming

a boring, kind of afterthought of a space

and turning it into a true jewel box.

I want to do karaoke in here.

I want to climb all over this space.

I want to make embarrassing memories

in this room with all of my friends.

I think this space is whimsical, it's glamorous,

it's cozy, and I love designing spaces that transport you.

[upbeat music]

Oh wow. Oh wow.

Oh my god.

[everyone laughing]

I feel like we're all in the same kind of mindset.

We are.

A kind of loungie.

We like all went to the club.

Fun, I love that you put a piano in here.

Yeah, that's a real- So were you thinking like,

this is the client has a piano?

I think, yeah, I think it's like a salon.

So they have really cool friends who are musicians

who come down and like play fabulous music.

Yeah [laughs]. It's like a deco piano bar.

I know, that's what I was thinking.

It's like 1920s classy vibes.

Yeah, loving this ceiling treatment,

that is so cool. Yeah, cute.

And so I was like

maybe the ceiling would like light up and blink

like a Studio 54 dance floor,

you know, like it could be programmed.

Now, I am obsessed with the way you have the swoop

of the sort of tinted ceilings.

I've always wanted to do a room with a tinted ceiling.

You know, this was supposed to be

like a dark kind of sexy 70's nightclub.

Becky, who would be partying in your room?

My room would be obviously karaoke enthusiast.

I designed this for,

in mind, I was like, this is for like a super celeb

who loves karaoke, but they can't go do it in public.

Courtney, how about you, so? I love it, I love it.

You know, I feel like it would definitely be someone

that's super cool, a little musical, artistic.

I love Tracy Ellis Ross, I think she's so fabulous,

and so I could see her here

with like her super cool friends,

and they're just like having a great time.

How about you Sasha?

Obviously it'd be Mariah Carey.

Yes. I've always.

I dreamt of the day- I can see it.

where she would call me.

[laughs] You're putting it

into the universe. Ever since MTV cribs

with her, Mario Boada penthouse.

I mean in the closet, I mean.

So Mariah, if you're out there, I'm waiting for you.

[everyone laughing]

[upbeat music]