Every house i've ever lived in has had smooth ceilings. I really like the way they look. We just bought a house that has textured ceilings and that's one of the first things we're going to change. If it's done right you shouldn't have any problems with peeling!

We had textured ceiling before and had it taken out. I always used to notice the ceiling and now that it is smooth I no longer do. What I do find is that it's cleaner and brighter. I guess our tapers were good because seams aren't noticable at all. Our whole house had textured ceilings and we had them all redone and we way prefer it.

I do, but the way the drywall was mishung in this house when it was built prevented that. Ggrrrrrr....... As it is, even with the heavy texture, you can still see the little bit of sag at the joints.

I also like smooth, flat walls. I wasn't able to do them during the reno on the majority if the house as we didn't redo every inch of drywall and didn't want the extra (huge and horrendous) cost of retexturing the existing drywall. I was, however, able to do flat walls in the new master bath and in the bedroom because we ended up taking down the small amount of drywall that remained after construction in that room to make the sheeting job easier than having to patch a couple small, oddly shaped areas. The old, tiny master bath was turned into my walk-in closet, and, since so much of the drywall had to be removed for the plumbing and electrical work, we redid all the drywall to flat in there also.

The seams do not show at all. We had excellent, attentive, polite and intelligent drywallers. (I even heard two of the big muscle-y guys on a smoke-free break discussing the Roman Empire. Amazing!) I love flat walls so much! They seem high-end as they should since they cost more to do. Spraying on texture takes less skill and less time than hand troweling the compound flat. I prefer the clean, simple look of them.

I would recommend getting what you want now. It's not easy to redo ceiling texture later. $500 does seem like a lot to you now, but if you won't be happy with anything else then suck it up and do it. I don't think you'd regret spending the money in the long run. I do think you could regret NOT spending it.

We have plaster (old house) and it is smooth. I prefer smooth. I would expect professionals to be able to hang drywall, tape it and mud it correctly so that you don't see seams.

I love the look of smooth and wish I had it in my house. Alas, I have to settle for knockdown, which is still far and above better than sprayed on texture. I know people who are stuck with it, but don't know anyone who would choose it now.

What is knockdown?

I have also only ever had smooth except for one house where the wall up the stairs was textured, probably because there had been an issue and they didn't know how to fix it right.
Getting rid of the texture was one of the first things we did. I am not a fan of textured or popcorn ceilings or walls.

Ceiling tiles for me. Or Homasote panels.

I don't like anything But smooth ceilings.

Smooth ceilings and walls are very much the standard here; I rarely see anything else except maybe in additions that are a few decades old. (Or houses like the one I grew up in which was built in the 1920's and had plaster.) All our walls and ceilings are smooth and we've had no problems with taping or seams.

I think various parts of the country have textured and others are smooth. My family in both CA and Seattle have textured while in NY I can't think of anyone whose walls aren't smooth. I can't imagine having anything other than smooth.

I have orange peel and I like it.

We had a textured ceiling in our old kitchen. We changed it to smooth and loved it so much we had our living room, dining room, hall and powder room smoothed out too. The ceilings seem higher and brighter now and we have had no seams showing. Now we can paint them without problems too.

I wouldn't want anything but smooth ceilings in a kitchen. I can't imagine trying to clean blueberry smoothie (BTDT) off texture. Smooth vs texture is indeed a geographic variation. My 50 yo house was originally finished with smooth ceilings in the kitchen and bathrooms, but the rest had that sprayed on crap. Newer homes have the sprayed stuff everywhere, unless they are custom, and the buyer specifically asks for, and pays for smooth. Homes older than mine would usually have smooth ceilings everywhere, except maybe hand textured ones in the living and dining rooms.

But textured walls of any sort here, in homes of any age, are resale KILLERS! It's easier to move a place without a bathtub or dishwasher than one with bumpy walls.

Yes! Definitely smooth!

We had textured ceiling in the kitchen and gasp! popcorn ceiling everywhere else. We had the popcorn removed downstairs and everywhere is smooth now. We love love love it. It is too soon to know about peeling and staining.

A word of warning - removing any kind of texture on a ceiling and reworking it to a smooth finish is extremely dusty work. It felt as if we walked and sat on, slept in, breathed and ate white dust. So choose carefully what you want to live with.

We will have the top floor done when we feel strong enough to deal with the dust again.

Depends on the style of your house and the look you are going for. Colonial or transitional? Smooth. Spanish or Mediterranean? Textured.

"I think various parts of the country have textured and others are smooth. " This is true sixtyohno
I didn't even understand the question when I read it first. LOL

wish I had true plaster walls...

It's true - here in the SF nay area it is very very difficult to find a home new or old that does not have the "knockdown" texture posted earlier in this thread! We've been here 12 years and now used to it, but it did strike as strange at first, used to seeing smooth walls and ceilings.

OP I would say go with smooth, if the drywall is installed properly it should be fine (aand make sure the drywall installer knows there will be no camouflage!

We have California knockdown. Smooth ceilings here in Alberta are not common and can cost $30,000 to have them in an average sized home. :( We really get ripped off here for any type of custom work.

If you can see the seams or have sags in either texture, your installers were hacks.

I have smooth and wouldn't stand for the dirt that collects on textures. If you fry anything in your kitchen, imagine what collects up there. Absolutely gross.

Ick. Now I'm going to bed and that is the last image in my head. Thank you very much.

Ah! But Christine!! If one is using one's range hood (not OTR) as one is supposed to be when any cooking takes place, you will NOT have any grease, oil, etc on one's textured walls. In my area, EVERYTHING is textured. Orange peel is what it's called around here. I've always had it and didnt have to scrub down my textured walls or ceilings anywhere except the soffit right above my crappy old all-in-one range/OTR combo unit in the old kitchen because the hood part was crappy and only covered part of the front burners. Hate OTRs. Semi-gloss paint on orange peel wasn't tough to scrub. In my new kitchen, no icky walls or scrubbing necessary after 14 months. My range hood is doing its job.

In the hall bath where none of the three ceiling fans we've tried has been able to handle the steam and condensation of even a semi-regular hot shower, ceiling and walls must be scrubbed down regularly.

Interesting that texture or the lack thereof is regional. Houses in my region were all built with orange peel and popcorn ceilings. One of the projects we tackled first after purchase was scrapping all the ceilings in the house. That stuff is nasty, both to live with and to remove.

Ack. Hate orange peel! I have systematically re-troweled over every wall and ceiling in my house by hand.

Go with SMOOOTH!

popcorn, orange peel, knockdown etc come and go in style. Just say no to those...

Smooth is classic, clean, simple and elegant.

Breezy, I can barely scrub myself down, let alone worrying about a ceiling.

I think my imagination sees spiky, pointy commercial (elementary school) ceilings. How awful. I think a knock down, as in the pic above, could be livable. As one who has stood on bars and cleaned ceiling fans, I can tell you the former is absolutely horrifying to me.

I did learn a long time ago that textured ceilings and walls were created because they were faster to knock out and required less skill to make perfect. Hence the "hack" comment.

When I have drywall and finished ceilings? They're gonna be perfect(ly smooth!).

Looks like majority says smooth. I live in the northeast and if I remember correctly, textured (sprayed on) was what everyone had in their 60's, 70's, 80's homes when I was growing up. Then those other swirly (stomp like?) and knockdown, skip trowel, etc became popular until what, 5 years ago? Now its smooth.

We only have smooth walls here in the northeast, except in old homes. My brother has plastered in Colorado, its the norm there. It looks like knock down type? Definitely a regional thing.

Knockdown (or orange peel) isn't popcorn, which is truly awful. If I had a choice, and it wasn't a $30K upgrade, I'd go with smooth everywhere. But living in a house with knockdown isn't the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I do not have grease filling any of the recessed parts of the texture. I fry occasionally, and when I do, I use my hood fan. I have flat paint in my kitchen with no problems. I do hate the look of texture with any kind of sheen.

The one thing I hated about a textured ceiling was when I painted my kitchen which had been mostly retextured after a soffit was removed. It was an absolute b**** covering the texture overhead with a roller.

When we were doing our kitchen addition/remodel, I requested that our contractor remove the popcorn ceilings and go with smooth since there was no way the addition could possibly match the popcorn properly. He did all three areas and it is AMAZING. Pity the rest of the house still has popcorn...

Yes popcorn is a very different thing than a light texture. It's hideous, can't be painted, and it holds odors in - for example one home we looked at had popcorn ceilings the had been smoked in - we ran far away from that place!

Textured usually means a light texture to keep things from looking too shiny and disguise imperfections in walls and paint. I find with the textured finishes I like a slightly shinier paint than I would have with smooth - for example with smooth plaster I like matte or flat paint but with the texture I prefer eggshell.

For a kitchen ceiling I think smooth with an eggshell paint would be great - easy to clean (once a year perhaps) and attractive.

Our kitchen is painted entirely gloss and I hate it, but I am planning to do a kitchen facelift after tax time, so that will be changed!