apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Sometimes a dark ceiling can visually push your walls away. A white room with dark ceilings and floors could be quite dramatic, and as it brings ceiling closer to floor, the walls will tend to recede.

In a room primarily used at night, especially if it contains recessed ceiling lights (potlights, to the Candace Olsen fans), a dark ceiling will all but disappear.

I also like the idea (as MGR talked about yesterday) of using a darker color to intentionally compress a space... so by painting the ceiling and walls of a small entry an intentionally dark color, it makes the larger room that follows seem even more expansive.

I also like the middle ground of a slightly tinted ceiling... a pale aqua, robin's egg blue, butter yellow, or even lilac, in an otherwise white room.

I almost always paint ceiling same color as wall, especially in small rooms...

I think it's fun when people do SOMETHING with the ceiling. But it doesn't have to be wild color. If you put pressed tin on the right ceiling, or if you do metal leaf on the right ceiling, or you spend the national debt of a small foreign country on plasterwork like in the ceiling in the picture, you can get some wonderful effects.

But to me, just the fact that they MAKE something called Ceiling White is a little troubling. It means that it's SUCH a given, and so NOT a variable, that it's almost not even up for discussion in the minds of most people! I think it's because of the whole landlord thing.

That said, it's true that some white SOMEWHERE in the room (OK, maybe even the ceiling) does help clarify what the colors are. It provides sort of a fixed point that the variables hinge on. Black can serve that particular little visual function, too, though, if you're very, very careful.

Decorator *mumble mumble* recommends that if one wants to make a ceiling seem more distant, to paint it a color that doesn't appear elsewhere in the room, particularly not near the floor. If I recall correctly, the idea was to choose a relatively pale color that doesn't repeat elsewhere.

A narrow room with a disproportionately high ceiling ought to feel larger with a dark ceiling, for the reason p(too) mentions.

I've tried to paint the ceiling a dark/saturated color in a VERY small room (albeit one with 9 foot ceilings) and discovered that it nearly gave me panic attacks. I am now chastened into always painting ceiling in light pastels or whites.

If you want the impact without the claustrophobia, you can always paper the ceiling - the job itself is a royal PITA but with the right paper (presuming you use something modern and, well, not dark) it can look beautiful.

AT, once you've exhausted chair art, maybe ceiling art is next? But, how to incorporate nudes...

I am trying to paint the pitched ceiling of a large studio space ... and I would need to paint directly on to insulation in the pitch (too expensive to put wood up there, and it's high up enough that if painted certain colors one couldn't tell it's insulation, I've seen it done before). The walls will be a light color, almost like a buckskin but a bit more white. My friend keeps telling me that blue is the way to go but I think blue would make it very daunting and change the light in a art studio space. Suggestions?

I have painted my bedroom a pale creamy beige color and was thinking about painting the ceiling two shades darker from the same paint swatch. I am trying to create a tropical theme and I have bright red floral bedding with a soft whispy net canopy over the bed. Do you think the darker ceiling color would make the room apear smaller?