Atiyolil: Look to the ceiling as your fifth wall
September 8, 2010
Marc Atiyolil
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Q: I am repainting my bedroom and I am looking at possible paint colours for my ceiling. I am a little at a loss when it comes to ceilings as I am the traditional type that used to think ceilings always had to be white. Now with all my friends repainting their ceilings a dark colour, I want one as well. I am seeing spaces with coloured ceiling in magazines and on television so I am getting used to the idea. Any tips for a rookie ceiling painter?
A: If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you? Sounds like something a parent would say to a child.
We all strive to keep up with the rest of the world and I bet if you would ask your children that question, you would get a few “yeses.” Hey, I once told my mother I would jump off that bridge if we were jumping to go get the toy we wanted. But of course these are the types of stories you never tell your own children because you expect them to learn your better traits. The stories we pass along are more along the lines of “When I was your age, I had to walk five miles to get to school. We didn’t have those fancy things you call buses!”
In good humour, same goes for design. Once all your friends are doing it, designers change around the styles to spice it up and you have a whole new “toy” to aspire to get. Therefore, take a little traditional, add in a modern feel to it and you have a recipe for success!
Ceilings are what I like to call the fifth wall in a space. It’s a large surface that we paint, so why not consider it when we are planning our colour schemes?
There are a number of different ways to add that je ne sais quoi to your ceiling. If you want to go with the traditional white ceiling but are a little concerned that the white will look harsh contrasting with the colourful hues of today’s colour schemes, simply tone down your white by adding a little bit of your wall colour in your ceiling paint. Not a lot of wall paint is needed to achieve this effect. Simply add a dab of paint so that your paint colour is still in the shades of white but once applied to the ceiling it will be what designers call a “warmer colour.”
To understand what I mean by warm colour, let’s touch a little bit on colour theory. In colours, we have warm and cool hues. Out of the colours we find on a colour wheel, half of these colours are warm and the other half are cool. Warm colours absorb natural light thus make a space feel warm and cozy. Cool colours reflect light thus make a space feel cool and airy.
Therefore, the same rules can be applied to ceilings. If a ceiling paint is a cool colour such as white, the space will seems more open and spacious. If a ceiling is painted with the use of a dark colour, the effect will make the ceiling seem lower and the space rather cozy. Some spaces with very high ceilings are the perfect fit for darker colours.
Ceilings should not be an afterthought. Deciding on the colour of your ceiling later in the project is like calling your mother-in-law two weeks after everyone has received their invitations for the dinner party, to tell her you forgot about her. Both of these scenarios will result in a disaster!
Marc Atiyolil is the editor-in-chief of Canadian Home Trends – Canada’s Home Décor & Lifestyle Magazine. To submit a question for Marc Atiyolil, visit www.CanadianHomeTrends.ca.