A dear friend, a garden designer and artist with an incredible eye, painted her dining room ceiling eggplant and the ceiling of her adjoining living room a coppery orange. Both rooms have white walls. They have a fairly extensive art collection and she didn't want to detract from the artwork but she did want to bring color into the rooms. When she first told me she was doing this, I thought it might make the rooms' ceiling feel oppressively low but surprisingly it's done the opposite. Wish I had a picture to show you. Her house is gorgeous (as is her garden. It's been in a number of magazines).

So far I've only been brave enough to paint my bedroom ceiling a light latte color but the walls are green not white.

One thing to keep in mind is how much of your ceiling's color will reflect off your high gloss white cabinets. If you can, paint a large sheet of light weight cardboard or cardstock and stick it to the ceiling and live with it for a week or two and see what you think.

I did my ceiling a light blue because I didn't want it to be funny white against my white cabinets. It's a small room with 8 foot ceilings and I guess I didn't want it all to be the SAME shade from the cabinets up, yet I didn't want two whites butting up together. I like it, and yet nobody even realizes it's blue unless they think about it. It's a wee bit eastereggy where it meets the green walls, but I don't have much of that, and if anything could be considered obnoxious, it's the walls, not the blue ceiling. And ME, of course! I'm still not done (can't part with the old fridge, for starters), but here's a picture of something else that shows the cabinet, wall, and ceiling colors fighting, or harmonizing, depending on the viewer (and your monitor). I might rethink the intersection of the green and blue, but that blue is one of the few choices in my kitchen I'm completely satisfied with. And I'm not even into blue. It's really an off-white that happened to be at the top of the blue paint chip card.

I have been working up the courage to do the same thing (not blue, though). When I was playing with a paint color visualizer, the combination I liked best had white walls and a colored ceiling. My family has mixed opinions about it, but usually like what I pick after they see it, even if they are skeptical before it is done. I need to decide on a backsplash before we paint, though.

Remember, ceilings are uncomfortable to repaint, but not really very difficult. And in my case, not very large. Perhaps that emboldened me. :)

In my last kitchen, I did walls AND ceiling a rather intense yellow. We all looked sort of jaundiced for a year until I installed a backsplash and cut the yellow a bit. You CAN go too far. But think of your ceiling as an offwhite, and you're safe. A lot of people do offwhites, but go creamish or beigey. You aren't considering anything different really. Light blue is offwhite too, as is light anything else.

And it's just paint.

In our Garden District house, we had all the formal spaces' ceilings painted Ellen Kennon's Gustavian Grey. Gorgeous.

So much so, that I can't imagine not having blue(ish) ceilings forever more!

I have always painted ceilings a colour. In our last house they were all a golden colour, MS's acorn squash. All the rooms had deep colours & it went with all of them. Everyone loved it & commented on it.

All my ceilings are EK Gustavian Gray. Except for the room that is Van Deusen Blue, top to bottom.

there was recently a post on apartment therapy about colored ceilings. all the pics looked AWESOME. most used bold colors on the ceiling. i say, go for it!

Here is a link that might be useful: my blog/not related to this post

All of my ceilings are colored! The bedrooms and bathrooms have wall color ceilings for restfulness. The LR/DR/entry has a pale tan I mixed from superwhite and the mud color accent walls in the entry. The library walls (what shows around the shelves) are soft orange with a warm yellow (called "hot moon") on the ceiling. The kitchen had to be "white" to bounce the indirect lighting off, but I didn't want white, so I mixed a tint of the burnt orange wall color and base white. The white of the woodwork of the central light fixture is very subtly set off. You don't really see the transition, but yet the fixture has more presence than if it were all the same color.

Sounds fun! We went with very bold colors in most of the house so kept the ceilings various shades of white, but I love an unexpected splash of color anywhere. Go for it.

Thanks everyone!
Lisa

We painted our ceilings BM Cumulus Cotton to mimic the blue ceilings of porches in our area. Here is a pic from when we were moving in to the new house:

{{gwi:1312}}

HSW--wonderful! Did you go with that wall paint or wallpaper? Or both? I like all three.

Thanks so much, fori! The walls are the original plaster (c. 1930) that we painted over with that yellow (I wish I could remember the name of it, BM Hawthorne Yellow is very similar). The pattern you see is actually fabric on a window valance that's been covered with plastic to keep the new ceiling paint from dripping on it (our Heating and Air guys put their feet through our ceiling while installing new duct work and the valances had already been hung at that point). Anyhoo, they had to fix everything, so I said, "Here's some blue paint I picked up yesterday afternoon. Could you please paint it with this instead of boring ol' white?" ;)

Well, that explains it--a valance! It seems so obvious when you point it out. :)

I am happiest surrounded by big blocks of opposite colors (a Libra), and a big fan of painting the "fifth wall" a color.
Might be a little hard to see, but the ceiling in the kitchen is light blue.

We even left the ceiling in the adjoining family room gold. I was worried it would make the space look too "chopped up", but I love it. The throw rugs are left over from the east coast blizzard last week.

I love the idea of painting the ceiling. Go for it.

Here are some pictures of those who got creative and
painted the ceiling. Wish I had their talent.

~boxerpups

thelennoxxfilesblogspot

SkyBlue Chicago homemagazine

Decorpad

VinegarEarthBlog

Wallcolor Google images

Manchester Tan and Sky Blue Benjamin Moore colors Image
from Google

Thanks for posting, but could you try again?
Lisa

I think photobucket was cleaning house, lost electricity,
fell asleep, is closed for Christmas or maybe they are
playing Wii...

Is it working now? I can see the pics but maybe no one
else can.... ummmmm am I going crazy here.
~boxerpups

I can see them, boxerpups! Love, love LOOOOOVE that purple ceiling! (wish I could do something remotely like that at my house)!

Here's what Benjamin Moore has to say about painting ceilings:

Good luck in whatever you choose!

Here is a link that might be useful: Benjamin Moore's take on coloured ceilings

Thank you!
Lisa

I think it would look fantastic and create the feeling of being outside. Our bedroom ceiling is high and arched and rather than paint it white, I cut the pale peach wall color by half. In some light the ceiling appears a soft white and in other light a very pale peach.