How To Pick the Best Ceiling Solution! When someone tells you the phrase “the largest surface in your home”, you’ll immediately think about the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. At the same time, this ceiling has the potential to completely transform your interior design and the aesthetic of your home as a whole.
Table of Contents
Regardless of whether you’ll paint an accent wall or pick a different style for your home, you need to consider what you’ll do with your ceiling.
Here’s how to pick the best ceiling solution for your needs
1. Pick the right type
There are so many different ceiling types that you should consider when doing some work on your home. Some of the types you should consider are:
- Gypsum board: Drywall is the best way to lower your room, reduce your heating bills, and protect your ceiling by adding one more physical barrier. They’re also incredibly easy to install, making them viable even if you aren’t a professional. They’re smooth, fire-resistant, and they’re even resistant to moisture.
- Wooden ceiling: Wooden ceilings can give you a sense of a cabin in the woods. It can make your home feel like a woodland lodge and help you establish a rustic style in your household. The reflection of artificial light (downlights and especially the chandelier) reflects flawlessly off the planks. The resale value of the home will also go up.
- Coffered ceiling: There’s no easier way to make your room look more luxurious than with coffered ceilings. Lighting opportunities here are unique since you can use these sunken panels to install new lighting sources. It also gives you more clearly defined spaces indoors, which is useful from an architectural standpoint.
Picking a different ceiling style can potentially transform your home’s interior completely. Depending on your intentions, this might be the most transformative decision.
2. Choose the height
Height is an important factor when considering the ceiling type. Just start by asking yourself, what kind of ceiling do you want?
A higher room can change the proportions of your layout. A small room with a low ceiling and high furniture may make the room look cramped. A room with a too-high ceiling can make it look empty and cold (aside from making it physically colder). Also, keep in mind that sometimes you do want an empty-looking room. For instance, when you’re aiming for a minimalist design/layout.
The style of your design also makes a difference. For instance, a contemporary room may require a lower ceiling, while a traditional room design almost always requires you to get a much higher ceiling.
The height of the ceiling will also determine the height of your windows. This can change your maintenance requirements (other than just cleaning a high ceiling) and wash more windows. Not to mention that larger windows are significantly more expensive.
3. Ceiling and lighting
You must also consider your ceiling when choosing the lighting for your home. First, you need to choose the function of the room. Will you also have task lighting (like in a reading nook, study, or home office)? If not, you may need more potent lighting.
Then, you may want to go with layered lighting or more lighting options. Generally speaking, the coffered ceilings we’ve previously mentioned are great.
Then, you must consider the ceiling material compatibility with your lighting source. We’ve already talked about the reflectiveness of your lighting, but the height of your ceiling may also decide the mount type. For instance, a lower ceiling may require a flush mount.
Also, remember that you need to plan for electrical wiring (which will go through your ceiling), not just pick the fixtures.
The light will determine your home’s layout’s overall design, look, and feel. This is something that you must be very careful about.
4. Maintenance
First, you need to understand that the key determiner of the frequency of your ceiling maintenance is the material of your ceiling. Namely, different materials require more or less frequent cleaning or upkeep. Also, not every material is as easy to clean. Smooth surfaces are much simpler to clean compared to textured surfaces.
Most people do not consider stain resistance when it comes to ceiling cleaning or maintenance. Namely, if it comes to the scenario where something was splattered across the walls and the ceiling, it’s also splattered across the room. You’ll probably paint it anyway, but some walls and ceilings can be cleaned, washed, or scrubbed.
Sometimes, if your ceiling is particularly soft, you might dent it by cleaning it. You can easily avoid this by picking something a bit more durable.
Remember that it’s not just about the material but the surface finish. Here, you have some options more compatible with some materials than others.
5. Energy efficiency
Higher ceilings make your room larger, which increases the air in the room, effectively making it harder to heat. It’s not just that, but hot air rises and circulates in the ceiling. So, it’s not just about the total temperature; it’s also about the temperature in the seating/standing level of the room.
Now, keep in mind that some material properties act as better insulators. Drywall, for instance, generally provides incredible results. Coffered ceilings also work this way because the gaps trap hot air, acting as an additional barrier.
In other words, reworking your ceiling to have better thermic properties will potentially give you a great ROI. After all, you spend the money on material and labor, but at the same time, you reduce your heating/cooling costs. Since these two are some of the biggest expenses in your budget, this can be almost as transformative as consolidating your loans.
Wrap up
At the end of the day, there’s so much you need to consider. You’re not picking a new ceiling daily, but you’ll spend every day looking at it. You’ll clean it every few days/weeks, and your bills will be drastically affected. So, take as much time and research to ensure you’ve made the right call. There are no two ways about it.
