It’s in the basement so we have led lights for all the high hats but natural light we won’t have besides two small windows. That is why we went light for the walls so it’s not a dark dungeon. We do like vinyl but is costly as the square footage is a lot. That is why we are leaning towards carpet. We just don’t know if we should do a pattern or keep it simple

If you take $1,500/1150SF= $1.30 Per SF. I don't know what flooring you can buy today for $1.30 per SF and I don't know who will install flooring for less than $1.50-2.50 per SF. unless you will be doing the installation yourself... Not to mention you have to remove/dispose existing flooring, get underlayment, trim, etc. Windows depend on what you be replacing them with, size, type, opening prep, etc you looking anywhere $700-1000 per window if you are lucky unless you be doing the install yourself. That said, what anyone paid here that price is useless to you. If you really want to see if doing everything is within your budget, get a few estimates and compare apples to apples unless you can work with the related cost being anywhere "between $5-10k" Good luck

You want light to make the space functional for how you plan to use it and to highlight features. We have many cans plus sconces and pendants. Depending on diameter of the cans, aligned and 4-6 feet apart is generally fine. Install dimmers controlling 3 or 4 so you can adjust the intensity and mood. I’ll try and send a pix of ours later.

I'm not sure of the intracacies of your plan, but in any case, it doesn't appear like you'll have much opportunity to correlate a seamless design with the upper story. However, I wouldn't be so concerned here. I think if you can limit the focus on the garage door wall facade, and direct focus to a more substantial facade in-line with the posts, which then focuses attention upwards towards the 2nd story - if that is achieved you can do anything on the garage door wall face you want. So here could be a method to doing that - symmetry is not a goal in itself, but here it is a good solution because the deck beam supporting post locations make a mismash soup of the strong upper floor roof, post, and window symmetry. Since they can't be moved, making sense of the locations with faux columns while directing attention upwards makes the back wall more transparent.