Our home gym by far was one of the most important spaces in the home when quarantine hit from Covid. With everyone stuck in their homes for weeks on end during the chillier spring months and gyms all closed, the home gym was where it was at! The place where you could go and hide from your family for a little bit and just de-stress.
At the time, thankfully we had all of the equipment unlike others who were scrambling just to find a 10 lb weight or using soup cans and laundry detergent bottles for their workouts. Problem was it wasn’t truly a “home gym”, as our equipment was just scattered in our dated basement. A nice home gym is what we always wanted so it was the perfect time to get the transformation going in case we were ever stuck in a quarantine situation again like that. Here is what ours looked like if you are looking for some home gym ideas.
My vision for our home gym was something clean, bright and modern looking. I wanted it to resemble a luxurious hotel gym (like ones I have frequented way too many times in my past years of business travel). So a dark gray, black and white it was. My husband did all of the work and I came up with all of the design elements for it. We love how it came out and hope to inspire you with your home gym transformation. Your home gym should reflect you, the types of activities/workouts you like to do and make sure to add some personal touches along the way. This by far is one of our favorite rooms in our house because we made it our own. See below for all of the elements we used to design this beautiful space for some home gym ideas.
Flooring
Let’s start from the bottom and work our way up discussing the details! We purchased this water-resistant laminate flooring to mimic a hardwood floor and felt a water-resistant laminate was the way to go for a workout room floor in the basement. My husband laid it down over the course of a few days and used an underlayment underneath it as well. I love the lighter toned wood flooring contrasting with the darker colored walls. This was the third flooring we had purchased for the room (I know my husband wanted to kill me, but I just felt the others we had purchased weren’t working for what my vision was). Thankfully, this last option did the trick.
I didn’t love the idea of placing rubber flooring down (being it covered the beautiful floor we finally laid), but it is necessary if you have heavy equipment and for placing down heavy weights. So we used a tough rubber roll and cut pieces to the sizes we needed. In the end, it didn’t distract me too much and I ended up getting used to it. This is a necessity when thinking about your home gym ideas.
Home Gym- Wall Design & Art
wall DESIGN
My vision for the workout room was something clean, minimalistic and almost mimicking a luxurious hotel gym. I knew I wanted a dark color on the walls, but had to contrast it with a bright white in order for it not to feel or look like a dungeon in the basement. We also only have 1 small window in that room so I knew not much light comes through. To achieve this balance, we went with the paint color from our bathroom renovation, Peppercorn by Sherwin Williams, which is a classic charcoal color.
To give the brightness we needed, we only painted the upper portion of the walls and left the lower half white and added a board and batten windowpane trim to it. My husband is now a pro at putting this up and it is much easier than it looks. At first we only did the right wall being the other would have a mirror, but the symmetrical mind I have, I had to have both match. So that is what we did! I love how uniform it looks now and the cleanness of the dark and white contrast. Perfectly coordinates with all of the industrial looking workout machines and equipment in the room.
wall art
For wall art, I knew I wanted inspirational quotes, but ones that would stand the test of time. I fell in love with this sign set. It is from an Etsy shop so I loved that. I love supporting small businesses! The style and colors matched exactly the look I was going for and I seriously live by these sayings! I think working hard and being nice are two of the most important things you can do in life. Working hard is especially key when it comes to fitness. You will only see results if you work hard! Hoping these reminders help me on those days when I’m dragging on the treadmill! This sign set also comes in other variations of letter color and background color.
wall decor & gear
In this workout room, I knew we needed a place to store smaller equipment. So my husband made a recessed area designated for all of our smaller gear. I mapped out in my head all of the equipment we had (and items I wanted to purchase) so I had a place to store all of them. We decided on a series of shelves to hold heavier items and hooks to hang longer others. Below is the list of gear we have in our wall storage area and the hooks and shelving we used as well.
GEAR
Everything had to be black or white to fit in with the room concept, so below are the items we purchased.
15 lb. Medicine Ball/ 5 lb dumbbells/ 10 lb dumbbells/ Sport Towels/ Black Crocodile Leather Yoga Mat/ Ab Roller/ Sliding Core Disks/ Speed Rope/ Resistance Cord
DECOR
Finding items to decorate the shelves was fun for this room. A few neutral items to create balance and stack items on did just the trick. I used linen storage boxes to hold smaller items you don’t want to display out in the open (earbuds, resistance bands, etc) and added some faux plants and a fun wooden figure into the mix. The figure is fun to move into different fitness poses and adds some play into the room.
Linen Storage Boxes (not ones used in room, but similar)/ Small Snake Plant/ Large Snake Plant in Stand/ Wooden Figure/ Wall Clock
SHELVING & HOOKS
As mentioned, we needed a place to store our gear on and hang them on. My husband cut and stained pieces of wood for the shelves and we placed them on sturdy brackets to hold the weight of the dumbbells, etc.
Brackets/ Medicine Ball Holder/ Wall Mounted Hooks/ Yoga Mat Hooks
LIGHTING
Being our workout room is in the basement, we installed high hats in the ceiling to create more light. Over the oversized wall mirror, we installed two wall sconces overhead to give a nice feature on that wall.
METAL BLACK DOOR
This black metal sliding door by far is my favorite part of the entire workout room. You can go with 1 depending on how much wall space you have or two like we did. We eventually will be renovating the rest of the basement so I felt like we needed to close off the workout room somehow without closing it off. That doesn’t make much sense, but you know what I mean! I wanted the workout room to still remain open and airy so at first we had part walls up behind the doors and I knew that defeated the whole purpose so I had my husband knock them down (god bless him).
The doors just remain hung on their hinges and don’t move so they play more of a decorative role and always remain open. You can have two though and have them open and close if need be. We purchased this hardware kit for them as well to work with the wall we were placing ours on. If you can use the kit they come with then that is great! These doors were costly, but they make such a difference. I can’t wait to incorporate them into our main living room entrance one day.
equipment
So a workout room wouldn’t be a workout room without the equipment! Thankfully we had all of that prior to creating this room. For cardio workouts, we have a Nordic Track Commercial Series Treadmill and a Stationary Spin Bike. For strength training, we have a Functional Trainer Cable Machine similar to something like this with a weight bench. We also have a set of adjustable dumbbells perfect for a range of weights and they sit neatly stacked. This is great option if you have limited space. To hang barbells and keep off the floor, we used this storage rack.
conclusion
I hope you love this home gym transformation and get some home gym ideas for your own space! A home gym will make such a difference and you will feel like you are actually working out in a gym without ever having to leave your house! Even if you aren’t able to do the complete look, just updating some pieces and using some of our home gym ideas will go a long way. Let us know what you favorite part of this transformation is by writing in the comments below.
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