Four Tips for Choosing Ceiling Colors

While many people (rightfully) focus on choosing the right color for their walls, the ceiling is an unexpected opportunity to add to the ambiance of your home and express yourself creatively. You don’t have to stick to plain old white for your ceiling as most people do.

However, sometimes having too many possibilities is as bad as being confined. You don’t want to choose the wrong ceiling color as it could clash with your wall color and make your room feel confined.

When you go about your house-painting business, here are some tips for painting your ceiling.

Think about the Size of Your Room

The size of your room could interact with the visual effect produced by your ceiling color, so it’s important to know how different shades produce different illusions.

Dark ceiling colors make the room feel smaller, which might make already-small rooms feel claustrophobic and cramped but will make spacious rooms feel cozy.

Lighter shades of ceiling paint have the opposite effect, making rooms feel larger. If you want your home to feel spacious, then a light ceiling color is a good choice, but if your ceilings are already high, you don’t want your room to feel cavernous.

Use Your Wall Paint As a Base

While you want to express yourself creatively a little bit when painting your ceiling a color other than white, you don’t want to go too crazy. Painting the ceiling a color that departs drastically from the wall color might make the room look loud and garish.

Use your wall paint as your frame of reference and just go a few shades lighter or darker in the same color, depending on what you choose.

Think about the Finish

Besides the color, you also need to think about the finish when selecting paint for going over your ceiling. Most experts recommend choosing a matte or flat finish. You don’t want to make the ceiling the focus of your whole room. If you want just a bit of shine, or your walls are glossy and a matte ceiling would clash, then choose a muted finish such as satin or eggshell.

Most people don’t recommend high-gloss finishes for ceiling paint because high-gloss is much less forgiving of flaws. Since ceilings are harder to prep for painting than walls, you don’t want people’s eyes to be drawn to every blemish in the paint finish right away.

If You Want to Make a Bold Statement, Make One

If you want to go for a bold painting finish for your ceiling, go for one and throw out the conventional rules for painting ceilings. If you want to paint the ceiling the exact same shade as the walls, go for it, just make sure you apply the paint evenly. If you want to paint the ceiling a completely different, contrasting color, go for it as well.

These are guidelines to help make the process of color selection easier, but remember that your home is your home, and you can do whatever you like.