You mean drop ceiling? From what I've gathered in the past, most people here cheer for drywall ceiling so you may not get too much positive fb on this one.

I'll agree a drywall ceiling looks better but don't know anyone IRL that has that in their basement. It's much easier to pop out a ceiling tile or two to get to something if it ever needs repaired or replaced.

We're almost finished with our basement and installed 2x2 ceilings tiles by Armstrong (forget which ones but could find out if you are interested). We have some standard 2x4 lay in lights as well as recessed can lights and a fan/light combo. You can pick whatever lighting you want, just remember the tile will need cut around the fixture.

I prefer the look of drywall but DH was pretty opinionated about this one so I let it go. I did pick out the ceiling tile. Resale isn't an issue for us.

DH's friend did the install. Here's a photo I found mid process. I have more photos but not on this computer.
{{!gwi}}

Hope this helps!

We have a drop ceiling in our basement, too. I agree that drywall is more "finished," but then how do you access all those wires & pipes?

Here's ours.

Shee, thanks for your pics. The terms drop and suspended are the same to some and different to others. Two construction guys told me different definitions. Yeah... I realize that most here would be pushing for drywall...

The walls are painted concrete block and the floor is also painted concrete. We will not be adding drywall to the walls, so it doesn't make sense to do so on the ceiling.
Our home is already overimproved for the neighborhood and the basement will never be used by anyone as "living space". It is very obviously a utility space, and I'm just trying to get it more organized. Since I spend a lot of time passing through and hanging out doing laundry, I tend to notice that the fifth wall negates a lot of the nice things I've done to the other four!

Thanks again for your input!

Laxsupermom! Did you do yours yourself?! Very nice!

We were pulling stereo wires out the other day and were saying how much harder that would have been to do if there had been a solid ceiling there!

DH does ceilings, I do floors. We redid the basement a few years ago so I'm a little fuzzy on the timetable, but I don't remember him taking more than a weekend to complete the ceiling. He installed the ceiling completely first, then I(with light from some camping lanterns) marked where I wanted the lights installed and he installed them.

We had the ceiling max system installed. I didn't like the feeling of being closed in, most suspended ceilings must be installed so low, but this is nice and high, closer to the height of drywall. I'm glad we did because we installed a speaker system soon after the basement was finished. No holes!! Since the kids are down there alot, we also installed sound buffering insulation. I don't know too much about it, but I had to staple the stuff..!

I actually thought drop and suspended were the same. I'll have to check that out.

The height of the ceiling doesn't have to be low. It depends on the height of your drywall.