5 Reasons Why A Subterranean Bedroom Rocks
Guest post by Tom Seery, founder of RealSelf.com
My home went on the Seattle market this past week, and the only negative feedback I’ve gotten on my Magnolia mid-century modern home listing is that some people don’t want a basement bedroom. I wish I could attend the home visit and point out that having a below-ground bedroom has distinct advantages. I know it, having slept there for eight years.
1. Noise-free sleeping
No matter the Seattle neighborhood you live in, you’ll get some combination of low-flying airplanes, train yards, and highway traffic that wakes you up, or drives you crazy. Despite having daylight windows, my below-ground bedroom is like a music sound studio. I’ve never heard the FedEx flights at 5am which are the steady source of complaints from sleep-interrupted neighbors.
2. Warmth, glorious warmth
My wife and I refer to our bedroom as being our cocoon in the winter. We can turn off heat to the entire house, fire up the gas fireplace, and comfortably strip down to t-shirts and shorts during the most blustery of days. Sure you can run your furnace day and night for your above-ground bedroom, but due to earth sheltering, subterranean sleepers spend less money on heat and have a smaller carbon footprint.
3. Cool when you need to be cool
Thanks to solar heat gains in the Seattle summer, above-ground rooms can get uncomfortably warm. Not the case for basements, which take 69 days to catch up to outdoor temperatures. At home I’ve never needed a fan or AC unit to get a good night’s sleep.
4. Guilt-free denial of solicitors
If you’re like me, after 9pm you dread the idea of someone knocking on your door asking you to support a charity by buying 100 candy bars. It’s just a privacy thing. When you’re in a basement bedroom, these requests go unheard. You don’t need to hide from the person looking in the door, window, or worse, requiring you to make up a lame excuse that you only donate online.
5. Finished basements make for grand living and storage spaces
My basement bedroom is big. The closet is ample. The TV sound system is amazing. Finishing the basement doubled the size of my home, and allowed for an ensuite living experience. The rooms could have gotten carved up into smaller spaces, but the larger living area is like being in a condo separate from the upstairs.
Lastly, you may be wondering about whether dampness will cause you to grow spores. Operating on occasion a dehumidifier and keeping air ducts open for the forced air heating system more than does the trick. My only recommendation for those of you heeding my advice to sleep down below is that you invest in larger windows which are relatively easily created with a concrete cutting service.
Tom Seery is the founder of RealSelf.com. His home is for sale and located in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle.
