The perfect ceiling definition for your home

When building or renovating a home, it is important to think carefully about ceiling definition. Issues around ceiling height and ceiling embellishments are all-important - getting a ceiling wrong can make your house look and feel odd. 

In a modern home, shadow lines work well and look stylish. "Depending on the choice of cornice, you can put a shadow line around the perimeter of the room; you have concealed lighting that shines up there, giving you a shadow line of light," says interior designer Amanda Richmond. 

Ceiling definition options

There are a number of options when it comes to ceilings for those who are renovating period homes. "Square-set cornicing looks good," says architect Andrew Fedorowicz. "You could also use a cornice frieze, which is a decorative strip that can be from about 50mm to 350mm wide. You place it on the wall, below the ceiling and the wall intersection where you've got a square-set cornice, or below the lower reach of the cornice in a more decorative room."

Painting around the ceiling area

Another option in period homes is to paint coloured bands on and near the ceilings. Start off with a wider band closer to the wall, and then add a contrasting colour in a narrow band at the edge of that wide band on the ceiling.

You can make a feature of ceiling roses in period homes by painting them in colours that contrast with the colour of the ceiling, using as many or as few different colours on the one rose as you like. New plaster ceiling roses can be purchased from and painted by specialist ceiling companies and installed by plasterers.

Common ceiling mistakes

Andrew warns against trying to imitate the ceilings of the older section of the house when building a modern extension on to a period home. "People make the mistake, when they love the proportions of the rooms at the front of the house, of trying to reproduce that same feeling in the rooms that they add on to the back of the house.

"They want open-plan living, which is a modern thing, but with high ceilings. They end up creating an 'aircraft hangar' which is not a space that is of human proportion. And all of a sudden they can't understand why they feel uncomfortable." 

However, if you happen to find yourself in this situation there are things that you can do. "You can provide physical barriers, or create different floor levels to break up that space," says Andrew.

It is also important to think about how much your ceiling might cost you in the long term. "In this era of sustainability you have to think about energy costs – it's expensive to service high-ceilinged rooms," says Amanda.

Talking with an interior designer in your area can help you find out which ceiling definition would best suit your home: