Are you prepared for the additional expense of tempered glass? How would those windows line up with the others of the home? Would they be oddballs? You don't want to design it so that they are the only use of transoms. You need to echo style decisions across the entire build.

Yes that would be a bonus of not doing transoms because we could also remove the tempered glass cost which we had to do for all rear windows. We had transoms drawn in the master bedroom too so that they would line up from the rear elevation but we're thinking we might remove those because my husband prefers not to have them in our bedroom due to being hard to block light and he likes it very dark while sleeping. And then we thought the great room could look different like a feature wall, but maybe not? Im thinking removing them all may be the way to go... I thought we needed them because we had half round transoms in our old house family room with 9 foot ceilings and the rooms without those looked like too much drywall above window but those might have been 5 foot windows instead of 6 foot.

Several thoughts:

- You imply that "only" 9' ceilings are something of a problem, a budget issue, whatever . . . but 8' ceilings are still standard.

- Must all transom windows be tempered glass? Why?

- Though I love transom windows, I think the box ceiling makes more of an impact.

- What about going with a slightly taller window?

All windows within 18" of the floor have to be tempered glass. It's not that the transom has to be tempered per se, but that by lowering the bottom windows down, the window assembly becomes subject to that requirement.

Yes LiveWire is correct as to why the windows with transoms need to be tempered in our case - because we have to lower the window to fit the transom. And by saying only 9 foot I meant that since the boxes in effect drop the ceiling height it could negate the cost of upgrading to 9 foot ceilings and often, at least in my area, you see box ceilings when the height is 10 or 11 feet in a great room.