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"Why Are You Ignoring Your Ceilings?"
by Nicole Stewart

They say that windows are the eyes of a space. Windows are overworked and fretted over to the point of becoming an industry unto themselves. So why not have the same concerns over the ceiling, which essentially could be equated with the "hair" of a space, and nobody likes a bad hair day, right? Most people do not give a second thought to painstakingly applying paint to every nook and cranny in a room and completely neglecting the ceiling. The ceiling will take it no more! It begs to be shone some attention. It is tired of only keeping the weather out - it wants more.

There are so many things that can be done to a ceiling, perhaps the most important of which being the application of lighting. Bottom line, without light there is no design. Whether it is task or ambient light or some combination of the two, it is crucial to the overall look and feel of a space, and difficult to apply to a full space without it being placed in, you guessed it, the ceiling. In addition, let us not forget the bane of the designers' existence, the ceiling fan. Yes, they can be atrocious, but they are also unavoidable in some climates, so get a great looking one and use it to your advantage.

Let us not relegate our friend the ceiling to merely functional status. The color of the walls in a given area can minimize, maximize, comfort or constrain, scream or whisper the feel in that area, but the ceiling has the power to blow the lid off of all that (no pun intended). A flick of the brush can cause the ceiling to descend or elevate, changing the whole feel of a room. By painting a solid color on walls and adding embossed metal tiles or a decorative wallpaper to the ceiling, you can give the illusion of the walls reaching for the heavens, and wouldn't you find that heavenly? Beyond paint and wallpaper there are so many structural things that a ceiling can bring to the party, from chandeliers, medallions and beams, to skylights. Ceilings today are coming in all shapes and sizes. There are vaulted ceilings, open beam, wave, barrel vaulted, cells, stepped plaster, etc., etc.

It is this author's humble opinion that the time of the ceilings has begun, walls beware!

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