10 Reasons You Should Consider Painting Your Ceiling

If you’re looking for a way to take the style in your home to the next level, consider painting your home’s ceiling. And, no, that doesn’t mean only making it disappear by rolling on a new coat of standard flat white ceiling paint. Stop playing it safe! Adding color to your home’s ceiling can do wonders for your interior design plans. Here are some of the best reasons you should paint your ceiling.

Making a room physically bigger takes lots of work and money, but simply painting the ceiling can make it feel bigger. Create this effect by using two different colors. Use two slightly contrasting lighter hues for the best results (painting the ceiling of a dark gray room white won’t do it). For example, a light gray ceiling with gray walls will draw your eyes upward, creating the illusion of higher ceilings.

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While vaulted ceilings can be beautiful, sometimes all that open space can make a room feel cold and uninviting. The right dark colors can bring that high ceiling lower, making the room feel more intimate. Colors such as deep blues, dark grays, and chocolate browns work best to achieve this effect.

Ceilings might not suffer the same abuse as walls, but they are not entirely out of harm’s way. House settling, extreme temperatures, and shoddy workmanship can cause unsightly imperfections. That doesn’t mean you have to live with them. The right paint can mask those blemishes. Paint the ceiling with a light-colored flat latex paint with a matte finish. It will absorb, rather than reflect, light to hide minor flaws in the ceiling.

Tray (recessed) ceilings, exposed wood beams, crown molding: highlight these beautiful architectural features with the right color of ceiling paint. The key here is contrast. For dark features, such as an exposed beam, paint the ceiling a bright hue to make the darker stain of the beam pop. For tray ceilings, paint the lower part of the ceiling with a light hue and the higher part a darker accent color to add interest and accentuate the difference in depth.

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Rooms with too many neutral tones tend to look a bit bland. This is especially the case with rooms that feature mainly neutral-toned furniture and bathrooms, which often have a lot of white porcelain. A bold hue on the ceiling can liven up a dull room and tie in well-placed accent pieces.

Kids love bright colors. And though many parents bulk at the idea of painting an entire room the same gaudy shade as a Crayola marker, a vivid hue on the ceiling can add fun to a child’s room without being overpowering. For an effect both you and your child will love, treat the ceiling as an accent wall. Keep the walls a neutral tone, such as white, and allow your child to choose the ceiling color. Kids will love having the freedom to choose, and parents can maintain a style they can live with.

Painting the ceiling and the walls the same color is a design element that can add sophistication to a room. Using a single dark shade for the ceilings and walls can make a room seem intimate, creating a calm feeling. It also adds continuity, creating a contiguous backdrop that places emphasis on contrasting furnishings.

North-facing rooms and those with few windows don’t get much natural light. Light colors and flat white ceiling paint do the best job of reflecting light into a dim room, but other tricks can achieve the same effect. Accentuate a room’s natural light by painting the ceiling a shade lighter than the wall color. This slight color difference tricks the eye, making the room seem brighter.

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Rooms with asymmetrical walls or odd ceiling angles can be hard to balance, making them feel uninviting. Going with a standard white ceiling with a contrasting wall color will only highlight the incongruencies in the room’s architecture. Painting the ceiling and walls the same color mutes these imbalances, focusing attention away from the architectural abnormalities and on the room’s decor.

Homeowners can be quite picky when choosing wall colors and flooring, but, when it comes to ceilings, most people don’t pay much attention. Given that the ceiling is just as visible—frequently more so—as the other flat surfaces in a room, it makes sense to include it in the interior design plan. Don’t ignore a room’s ceiling. Paint that open space to enhance a room’s design by tying the ceiling color into the room’s style.