When you are decorating a room, it is easy to obsess over what is
covering the floor and the walls. But what about the ceiling?
It rarely gets much attention — beyond a coat of flat, white paint. And
that is a missed opportunity.
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“To leave the ceiling behind — when you’ve resolved the other surfaces in
a room — seems not only unfortunate but also throws off the balance,” said New
York designer Steven Gambrel. “If I’ve got texture on the walls or material on
the floor that has character, I’m trying to give that top surface the same
level of patina — or massive contrast.”
The way Corey Damen Jenkins, an interior designer in New York, sees it,
the ceiling may be more important than the walls.
“In a room, you usually have six planes — four walls, the floor, and the
ceiling — but the ceiling is the only plane that’s unobstructed by artwork and
furniture,” said Jenkins, who is no stranger to making big statements overhead.
“I sometimes even start there and work my way down.”
Embellishing the ceiling is especially important in rooms that guests will
see, including “powder rooms, bars, libraries, dining rooms, places where you
might be having a cocktail or eating dinner,” said Fern Santini, a designer
based in Austin, Texas. “You can do fun things to create fun rooms that have
instant mood.”
We asked a few designers to walk us through the process, step by step.
Make it reflectiveWhen Gambrel wants a statement ceiling, he sometimes gives it a mirrorlike
finish of high-gloss paint. “That, of course, brings in a ton of light, meaning
that light begins to bounce across the ceiling,” he said. “It adds a little
polish.”
To achieve his desired finish, he uses multiple coats of
ultra-high-gloss Hollandlac enamel from Fine Paints of Europe. But because the shiny surface
will reveal any imperfections, the ceiling must be skim-coated and sanded
perfectly smooth first. Gambrel has used neutral colors to simply bounce more
light around a room but has also created attention-grabbing ceilings in colors
like vibrant peachy pink and coral.
Jenkins achieved a similar look in a dining room with Venetian plaster
burnished to a high gloss. “It almost looks like a pool of water on the
ceiling, upside down,” he said.
Add a metallic touchAdding a metallic finish to a ceiling will also make it shine. One option
is to apply gold leaf or some other metal leaf to the drywall or to use a
wallcovering with the same look.
Douglas C. Wright, an architect in New York, added pressed tin to the
ceiling of a kitchen in Connecticut and left it unpainted — an old idea that
adds
texture and shine.
“We had to work with a low ceiling, and the tin ceiling reflects a lot of
light,” Wright said. “It took what was kind of a dim, dark space and made it
bright, warm and cozy.”
Blast it with patternDespite its name, wallpaper is not just for walls. While it is more
commonly applied to vertical surfaces, it’s also delightful on a ceiling.
Jenkins has designed rooms with wallpapered ceilings featuring elaborate
florals, clouds, and multicolored, marbleized patterns. Santini once designed a
kitchen with a ceiling covered by a swarm of illustrated honeybees, thanks to
wallpaper from Timorous Beasties.
“We could have just painted it white, and it would have been so boring,”
she said. “This is another layer that makes the room so interesting.”
Panel it in woodSometimes a room calls for something a bit more understated. Then the best
approach to take may be paneling a ceiling in wood, which adds visual interest
without stealing the show.
Wright has designed many types of paneled wood ceilings, both painted and
unfinished. For a cozy library in Connecticut, he covered the ceiling with wide
boards painted a deep purple. “They’re just wood boards, butt-jointed and
painted,” he said. “It creates a striped pattern similar to the wood floor.”
For the lounge of a house in Short Hills, New Jersey, where the goal was
to make the room light and bright, he added V-groove paneling to the ceiling
and painted it glossy white, creating a more pronounced pattern that still has
plenty of reflectivity.
Add architectural detailsYou do not have to cover the entire ceiling with wood to give it
personality. Another option is to use molding in wood or plaster to add
architectural detail. Crown molding that runs around the edge of the ceiling is
the most common choice, but there are other options as well.
When Jenkins designed a new house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he used thin MDF
molding to create shapes above the open living and dining area, defining the
seating areas and setting off the light fixtures. “I designed this geometric
trim on the ceiling,” he said. “But it’s all flat stock and very inexpensive.”
Gambrel routinely
designs rooms with muscular crown molding, but he has
also used trim to give ceilings a subtle coffered or beamed look, or to create
grids that hide access panels and serve as frames around light fixtures. In
many cases, he paints this woodwork a contrasting color and sheen to show it
off.
Wash it with plasterEven if you do not want much decoration overhead, there are subtle ways to
add visual interest.
One of Gambrel’s favorite options is waxed plaster: a coat of bare plaster
finished only with wax after it dries. “It’s still smooth to the touch, but it
has a lot of movement to the finish,” which is picked up by the eye, he said.
“It feels alive, unlike a rolled coat of flat paint.”
When he wanted a deeper color with more variation for the foyer of a
London apartment, Gambrel chose tadelakt, another type of plaster, coating both
the walls and the ceiling in it, for a finish that looks as soft as suede.
The ceiling, he noted, shouldn’t be an afterthought — and it should not
look like one, either.
Whether you want an elaborately embellished ceiling or one with a simple,
calm finish, he said, “you want to make it look intentional and like it was
considered.”
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