10 Great Ceilings

Ceilings are often neglected, but they can transform a home's sense of space with a bit of color or subtle pattern. We've featured some incredible ceilings on Apartment Therapy, from see-through glass to gathered fabric to plain old painted ceilings. For ten inspiring ideas, click through the photos above and the links below...

FIRST ROW
• 1 Patterned: Pied-a-terre by Wary Meyers
• 2 Gold: Dana's Sunny Logan Square Apartment
• 3 Paneled: White Ceiling via Domino
• 4 Striped: Villa Planchart by Gio Ponti
• 5 Painted: Blue Ceiling via Domino

SECOND ROW
• 6 Vaulted: Barry and Rosemary's Eichler Home
• 7 Gathered Fabric: Gehry and Lanya's Life Meets Art
• 8 See-Through: Gil's Path to Enlightenment
• 9 Sky-Lit: Alison and Joel's Light Filled Victorian
• 10 Ceiling with Storage: Books in the Rafters

Comments (7)

Photo #5 is the only one that is actually do-able for most of us -

The remaining 9 photos aren't much more than Real Estate Porn since the vast majority of us can't knock big skylights or vaulted/beamed/paneled ceilings into the apartment above us or install tin ceilings and elaborate gilded plaster mouldings.

How about some inspirational photos of ceilings that are actually somewhat achievable for us folks w/ plain flat ceilings?

Though the architecture in Photo #7 is amazing and I like the unusual paint colors, I'm not a fan of the skydiver-just-landed-on-my-roof fabric ceiling at all, and I also dislike the bed very much.

I like Photo #5 - I'd like to see more examples of sky-blue ceilings!

Bepsf not everyone has your ceiling. I come to apartment therapy for the wide range of ideas and inspiration. Just because it doesn't work in your living quarters doesn't mean the post lacks value.

I get so tired of the whiney posts complaining that article y shouldn't be posted because it won't work in x users apartment, or that because you can't personally afford the home/furniture a post shouldn't be made about it.

Some of the stuff posted here is merely inspirational, can't we just appreciate it as such?

/end rant

Really, southwick? How am I missing all the bathtub-shaped skylights in the thousands and thousands of craigslist apartment ads I've viewed over the years? Or the 20 foot ceilings? Or the entire walls of floor-to-ceiling windows? I would guess very few AT readers live in anything that resembles most of the places featured on here.

I don't expect every post to be useful for my own apartment, but it does get a little tiring to see what bepsf very accurately called Real Estate Porn. It's staged to death. Luxury condo photos are just as airbrushed as Britney's acne.

If there's a budget or DIY way to accomplish a similar aesthetic, that's one thing, but if the whole "inspiration" is having a giant round hole in the ceiling or 30-foot-windows it does feel sort of disingenuous to say "look at this cool idea!" Idea for what? Envy? Fantasies involving chainsaws and evictions?

Just call it porn. That way everyone knows it's totally unrealistic but we're going to look at it and want it anyway.

Hm, seems like this post has made some people hit the ceiling...

(So sorry, I even groaned while typing it, but I couldn't resist!)

And maybe we could achieve some of these looks... I know that ceiling no. 1 is probably tin. Could that anaglypta wallpaper stand in for the tin?