In Decorating, Remember to Look Up

If you have a room that needs decorating help and you’ve already covered the basics, try looking up. That’s right, look at the ceiling. While how-to articles and decorating TV shows offer great advice for addressing floors and walls, ceilings are often overlooked. And yet a beautiful ceiling can upgrade an average space to an amazing one.

I chose this pale blue shade to accentuate the cathedral ceiling in the master bedroom of the Parade Home for the Home Builder Association in Winston Salem, N.C. this year.

Blue ceiling gives light & airy feeling

The pale blue ceiling gives the room a light, airy feeling while allowing the wall color to remain neutral—which makes it easier to select and update bed linens and drapery fabrics.

While there are a number of creative ceiling solutions, paint is often the easiest and least expensive. A soothing, pale blue hue looks good in any room, particularly the bedroom. Imagine lying back on your bed and feeling as though you’re looking up at the sky—just be sure to skip the urge to paint white puffy clouds too.

When it comes to creating fabulous interiors, we’ve been taught to search for comfortable club chairs and sofas and quality living room tables, useful lighting and inspiring color palettes. There’s plenty of talk about floor coverings (carpet, rugs, hardwood flooring) and wall coverings (paint, faux finishes and wallpaper)—so where’s the good information about ceiling coverings? They are, after all, the sixth dimension (after the four walls and floor) of decorating.

A colorful ceiling draws your eye up and gives the room the illusion of height in the same manner as wood ceiling beams and architectural moldings. Shades of soft, creamy yellow or barely-there, dove grey are excellent choices. Lighter shades will help raise the ceiling while darker tones will bring it down to create warmth and coziness.

An all-white room can have plenty of character if you pay attention to the ceiling. In this example, the ceiling gives the room drama and visual interest in contrast to its stark, mostly empty walls.

Kim Jeffery, Design*Sponge at Home (Artisan Books)

A chandelier–uniquely installed in the den–serves as a directional element to lead the eye up to the ornately wallpapered ceiling that features a subtle tone-on-tone pattern in the background, various borders, and a center medallion that all combine for a decidedly eclectic look.

Faux finishes, particularly ones with a sheen or metallic finish, work well for dining room ceilings and add a glamorous effect. For an even more adventurous look, wallpaper, beadboard, and faux-tin ceilings make quite a statement.

And don’t forget to look up in your outdoor spaces as well. The most gorgeous porches in historic Charleston feature ceilings painted in shades ranging from bird’s egg to aqua.