Decorating living rooms with high ceilings – top tips
Decorating residing rooms with large ceilings can be fairly an scary undertaking. With all that wall space, you happen to be at chance of producing a dwelling place that can truly feel cold and stark. But interior designers are on hand to offer you up their top strategies for filling out all that wall house or embracing it in its entirety and inviting people to end in their tracks and glance up.
For Houston-dependent interior designer, Nina Magon, the noticeable answer is to draw the eye and go large and daring. ‘A great way to design and style a balanced large-ceiling interior is to include bigger more eye-catching pieces like furnishings, art, and decor vs a lot of smaller things that can clutter your room,’ she says.
From wall artwork to clever crown molding, and statement lights to beautiful shelving, these interior design thoughts can quickly renovate the house.
1. Get imaginative with shelving
(Image credit history: Jayne Amelia Larson. Design: Scrafano Architects)
If your residing area has higher ceilings and you happen to be hunting to crack up that wall space with decor, a single intelligent way is to install residing place shelves. Perform close to with the architectural features of your home – if you have a chimney breast, shelving that flanks both side of the breast will reliably look great.
Retain points symmetrical wherever doable, and never be frightened to go high, you can fill the room with attractive pieces that deliver fascination to your partitions, continue to keep the room whole of character and character, and draw the eye upwards.
Think about developing your quite possess vignette – go for ceramics, sculpture, hanging indoor plants, and stylishly and purposefully placed coffee table books, but resist the urge to overfill and embrace the destructive room. Too considerably muddle can just search untidy. Mild your cabinets from over if you want to make even a lot more of a spotlight on the shelving. In this illustration from Scrafano Architects (opens in new tab), the cabinets go all the way from the residing home up to the ceiling for a trendy storage resolution.
2. Embrace the architectural functions
(Impression credit rating: Nina Magon)
Alternatively of striving to desperately fill the white room, embrace it and make a function out of it with crown molding and cornicing specifics. This stops the place from appearing two-dimensional, gives some texture and brings interest to the walls, with vertical lines drawing the eye upwards.
‘When planning a high-ceiling interior, I like to usually assume about harmony,’ states Nina, who designed this residing place in a residential neighborhood of Piney Position, Houston, Texas. ‘One way to include a nice harmony to the higher ceilings is to increase architectural information, this kind of as trim, to the partitions and ceiling. This permits you to incorporate depth and interest to the partitions without the need of more than-cluttering.’
Crown molding is the embellishment on the wall, typically where by it junctions with the ceiling. It will come in a array of types and hailing from distinct durations, meaning it is really not so easy when deciding to insert crown molding to your dwelling. If you happen to be doing work with a period household, search to architectural history to determine how you may well want to embellish your wall – some are a lot more decorative than many others, like crown roses and floral motifs, whereas simple molding is noticed in far more contemporary areas.
3. Go bold with assertion lights
(Image credit rating: Ernest Theofilus Ditho Sitompoel. Structure: Bitte Style and design Studio)
Sometimes, it’s about filling the void of area that exists among the floor and the ceiling, and for superior-ceilinged rooms, this can create a space that feels considerably too airy and not conducive to rest. A good dwelling space assertion lights fixture can do the trick and help fill the place.
‘For this residing space, we desired to make it extra spacious and related to the top degree by developing a huge void. It also enables the air circulation and natural light to get inside of the place,’ describes Agatha Carolina of Jakarta-primarily based firm, Bitte Design and style Studio (opens in new tab). The lighting helps develop a desired destination to concentrate the eye. ‘We positioned pendants mild to develop a scale of intimacy,’ says Agatha.
4. Use normal gentle to your benefit
(Picture credit score: Matt Garcia Style. Pemberton Area)
Organic mild is your most effective pal when functioning with tall ceilings and white partitions. Even in the airiest of spaces, if there are no home windows, even if there is enough room, a place can come to feel cavernous. Try out and reduce this by permitting gentle in exactly where feasible, on the lookout to your residing home windows, and functioning with daylight as observed listed here in which a slither of mild arrives in through the clerestory home windows. ‘This living space is the to start with place you stroll into from the entry,’ suggests Matt Garcia, architect and designer at modernist household structure agency, Matt Garcia Layout (opens in new tab). ‘The purchasers preferred it to be dramatic and whole of organic light-weight.’
‘The clerestory home windows do two great things. They convey in gentle from two sides and the horizontal break retains the artwork wall from experience as well tall. You get peeks of the tree tops and sky from distinctive viewpoints which draws the eye up. We required to showcase the organic lighting on the wall surfaces as considerably as attainable.’
5. Go daring with color
(Picture credit rating: Regan Baker Style and design)
Consider big and never shy away from daring colours that will help you fill the area with relieve. Enhance the wall with 1 massive piece of artwork, or maybe a gallery wall. This living spot by San Fransisco-dependent Regan Baker Types (opens in new tab) prioritizes decorating a white wall with bursts of color. Wall art more than the hearth is a kaleidoscope of shade and that sunshine-yellow staircase is a joyful addition to the room.
6. Consider a log fireplace with flu
(Image credit history: Regan Baker Layout)
Draw the eye upwards by earning a function out of a log hearth and its flue. This style and design from Regan Baker Style and design in Tahoe prospects the eye all the way to the ceiling and directs the eye in direction of the gorgeous picket ceiling and emphasizes the rustic farmhouse design and style. a authentic aspect of the beautiful wood ceiling. The final result is a pleasing mix of modern and cabin-style, the best modern-day rustic dwelling area.
7. Paint the ceiling
(Impression credit score: File Beneath Pop)
Referred to as the ‘fifth wall’ by designers, the residing place ceiling so normally will get forgotten. But there are unlimited paint selections that can aid you generate a element of the dwelling space ceiling rather of heading for similar white paint you normally do. the ceiling to attract the eye upwards. If you’re operating with a higher ceiling and wanting to make the place sense far more cozy, offering on your own a darkish ceiling makes a cocooning roof-like come to feel in the area. Assume very carefully about the shade you go for. ‘Dark ceilings can be daring statements, primarily with contrasting white walls,’ claims Jennifer Morris of JMorris Style (opens in new tab). ‘It can insert unpredicted drama to an region in the place that is often underrated.’ Alternatively, go for a tone from the exact same family members as your wall paint to build harmony in the space.
8. Create a feature wall
(Image credit rating: Ellen Mcdermott. Structure: OAD Interiors)
Go for a daring lick of paint to generate a residing space accent wall. A dark accent wall could even make a space glimpse greater and experience broader, even if it is a slender space. This is all down to the way the eye perceives shade and mild. Dim hues recede from the viewer, so the accent wall visually enlarges the room and produces distinction which can make a home seem brighter.
In this illustration from OAD Interiors, a black wall was utilised to make the space appear to be bigger. ‘We required to emphasize the height of the area so we selected to have the fireplace in black to offer contrast and a wow variable,’ says Melissa Anderson of Brooklyn-based mostly OAD Interiors (opens in new tab).
