When we dec­o­rate we think about the floors, the walls, the win­dows, fur­nish­ings and ac­ces­sories. We for­get or ig­nore the ceil­ings! We paint or leave the ceil­ings a bor­ing white be­cause that is what we are ac­cus­tomed to. We al­so see white as be­ing neu­tral and safe. Guess what? Safe can be bor­ing. Safe can be sab­o­tag­ing the suc­cess of your space. I want to chal­lenge you to step in­to your space and imag­ine what else you can do to your ceil­ing, which is com­pat­i­ble with the rest of your d&ea­cute;cor, to el­e­vate the dec­o­ra­tive eq­ui­ty. Think colour. Think of the en­tire room three-di­men­sion­al­ly.

White ceil­ings.

If your ceil­ing is flawed in some way or there is good rea­son why you would not want to draw at­ten­tion to it, white is an op­tion. But try a 'soft' white, rather than a stark white. If the room is not well lit white ceil­ings can help re­flect light in the room. Us­ing white ceil­ings through­out the house uni­fies the spaces and helps the rooms re­late. I rec­om­mend that you add a bit of the wall colour to tint the white or add two to three parts of pure white to the wall colour. By us­ing the same colour, all the tones look good to­geth­er.

With neu­tral walls such as brown, beige and sand choose the light­est val­ue of the colour on the paint strip. White ceil­ings fit in quite well in for­mal decors. White is per­ceived as be­ing taste­ful and for­mal. White ceil­ings are ex­pect­ed in tra­di­tion­al decors. White ceil­ings are al­so dra­mat­ic with dark or bright walls. White walls and white ceil­ings look crisp and clean, al­most ethe­re­al. If that is the ef­fect you are go­ing for, white ceil­ings are the an­swer.

Ceil­ings with colour.

If not done well, dif­fer­ent coloured ceil­ings can ap­pear dis­joint­ed, es­pe­cial­ly in open lay­outs. Bear that in mind when you are look­ing for can­di­dates for the non-white ceil­ing. Even if your walls are white, you can still use colour on the ceil­ing. Soft colour and high gloss will open up the room. In gen­er­al, dark colours will make the ceil­ing ap­pear low­er. Use these ef­fects to your ad­van­tage when se­lect­ing colour. If your ceil­ing is high a sat­u­rat­ed colour can make the room seem more cozy. You can al­so con­sid­er paint­ing the ceil­ing the same as the wall. This will make the bound­ary be­tween the ceil­ing and the walls dis­ap­pear; mak­ing the ceil­ing ap­pear high­er.

I al­ways re­mem­ber a Can­dice Olsen de­sign where she used a very dark ceil­ing in a white room: very dra­mat­ic. At night the ceil­ing dis­ap­peared. Strong colour on both the wall and the ceil­ing will make ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­tails such as medal­lions, columns and trim pop. Any colour of ceil­ing can be en­hanced with crown mold­ings, medal­lions and oth­er ar­chi­tec­tur­al em­bell­ish­ments. Just a side bar. You can de­ter­mine the cor­rect size of the ceil­ing medal­lion by di­vid­ing the area of the room by 7. The fi­nal num­ber is the num­ber of inch­es your medal­lion should be. For ex­am­ple, a room that is 15' by 15' would be 225 square feet. The ide­al size for a ceil­ing medal­lion for this room would be about 32".

Ceil­ings with pat­tern.

You can al­so add tex­ture and pat­tern. When I speak of tex­ture I am not re­fer­ring to the pop­corn ceil­ings of yester-year. We have more mod­ern op­tions these days. Tex­ture can hide ceil­ing im­per­fec­tions and flaws. Pat­tern can al­so be in­tro­duced with sten­cils or wall­pa­per. You can paint geo­met­ric de­signs on the ceil­ing. Your ceil­ing can have more than one colour fol­low­ing dif­fer­ent lev­els of the ceil­ing, the mold­ings or oth­er em­bell­ish­ments, for in­stance. You can get very cre­ative with vault­ed and trayed ceil­ings. Your ceil­ing need not be ig­nored or bor­ing. En­hance your d&ea­cute;cor by adding style to your ceil­ing. Let your ceil­ing be any­thing but flat.