Our last house, on a rather flat lot in the Midwest, was a split level. The kind where the entry, ,iving, dining, and kitchen are the main level even with the front yard and back yard, and the bedrooms are half a flight up. and the family room, laundry, and garage are half a flight down. The family room had sliders that opehed to a patio carved into the back yard, and there were steps up from that patio to the kitchen/dining room patio. We liked it, but not everyone likes a split level.

What do you mean by exposure? Windows in a large light well or a walk-out?

Here is an example of a large light well. They can be built out to all different sizes. Notice there is a metal ladder on the left, it allows for emergency egress.

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Another:

Colfax Basement · More Info

Stone Window Well Sheds Light into Basement · More Info

You can spend a lot more money and do something like this:

Patio and Exterior Renovation in Villanova, PA · More Info

Thank you for your responses! The light well is an option we have not considered but will be thinking about. Lots are few and far between and our options are limited. We want a two story with a partial exposure at least bc we use our basement often. Any other ideas are welcome

Pit basements suck. The problem isn't light, it is drainage. Many people will tell you that a properly constructed pit basement will not have water intrusion issues, but they will omit the rarity of any particular pit basement being properly constructed. In other words...they leak far too often to ever choose that option.

Interesting @bry911. In my area nearly ALL the homes have basements, most of them finished. (The rare home on a slab or crawl is worth far less.) We all have sump pumps, usually with backup batteries; some people have backup generators too. I've heard of occasional water in basements, but those were in homes that were downhill from their neighbors (not flat lots) and they lost power in a storm without a backup for the sump. My house was more than 50 years old, and in 25 years I only once had a tiny bit of seepage when the output pipe for my sump got shifted off from the landscape pipe outside (it shifted due to frost heave) and the water built up in a huge puddle next to my outside wall. Luckily the seepage was in a storage area; I only noticed because the sump was running almost continuously. (If I hadn't ignored the sump for more than a day, I would have had no seepage.) Overall, the value of a basement here far outweighs the possibility of water, in my experience.

The landscaping needs to be graded appropriately, of course, and eaves and gutters need to move water away from the house.

We also live in a place where basements are completely common. I agree that drainage needs to be well done but so what. Make sure it happens and enjoy your basement. We have a sloped lot so our back is walk out mostly. But our suite is full on basement with window wells stairs down as is our guest room.

We just sold our full basement house. Used our basement all the time. The fact that it didn't have a door didn't bother us. It still had windows, abs we still used it.
My advice... you will spend far more trying to get a walkout out of it, then just finding a different lot. If this is your only option, I would ask why a walkout is that important.
FWIW, every home in my area has a basement.

Several houses (single story with basement) in my area have dug a shallower basement and raised the grade around the house. That gives nice sized windows, mostly placed in the back, with no giant window well needed. All that excavated soil has to go somewhere. Rather than trucking it out it was used to raise the grade.

For a flat lot and a non- split-level house, if you do not require a grade-level entry, you can set the 1st floor elevation of the house at say ~32" up. So you would have 3 risers up to a front porch, and another step up through the door (but the same steps within the garage needing floor space). This would allow some of the bulk of the "lookout" basement windows (~18") to be above grade, with any lower portion remaining still within a window well. Same as what @sandk said but without raising grade - so the house would look like a typical pre-1940s.

Usually in the Midwest large window wells and "walk-up" basements are frowned upon because of the snow drifts, leaves, and aforementioned water risk.

Regular basements are fine with respect to drainage.

Bry911 was talking about "pit basements" like in the pictures. A sunken, basement patio if you will, with a basement door that opens onto it.

The drainage in this situation become VERY important as the sunken patio area can fill with water and get into the house. This happened at my parents house while I was in college. What a mess!

Thank you all so much!

Lifelong Chicago suburban woman here. Fighting water in basements is the norm. Just listen to the constant ads for XYZ Waterproofing. Why do you think many housing codes require sumps? We're all living in what was once the bottom of Lake Michigan, a deep expanse you can still see, looking down from highways to the west. Soil is heavy clay. Dig a basement a few inches uphill from me and your sump is sending the displaced water into MY basement. In the city, there are hundreds of thousands of 1900's homes raised at least three feet above ground level to provide even 60" basements w/short windows at ground level. City lots are nomally only 25 feet wide; people are 'stacked' in the limited space, and a basement is space. South of the I-80 people want basements as storm shelters.

You'll at least want to check the water table where you're building.