Interior designers have long considered the ceiling a room’s “fifth wall,” a blank canvas with far more potential than a coat of plain white paint. Sure, you can just paint them, but Houston interior designer Sandy Lucas of Lucas/Eilers Design Associates is encouraging homeowners to think beyond basic white and explore bolder possibilities.

“The ceiling is just so important,” Lucas says. “Historically, ceilings in traditional design were always included [in decor]. The midcentury contemporary era is when ceilings and walls became very simple, white, and undecorated.” 

Today, ceilings are having a design moment, with architects, interior designers, and home DIYers alike experimenting with different treatments, and for most, the sky is the limit. 

Many designers say paint is the most cost-effective option for decorating a ceiling. Lucas favors soft blues, such as Farrow & Ball Skylight, Benjamin Moore Yarmouth Blue, or Sherwin-Williams Ellie Gray, which she has used in her own home. It’s a trick many Southerners use on outdoor porches to mimic the color of the sky and keep wasps away. However, for those who want to add more visual interest, alternatives include coffered ceiling treatments, beams and trusses, plaster, and even wallpaper. 

It wasn’t until Linda Eyles of Linda Eyles Design signed up to decorate a room in the 2019 ASID Gulf Coast Chapter Show House that she used wallpaper on a ceiling. She noticed that tourgoers would walk into the room, look around, and comment something simple, like, “This is pretty.” But, at some point, they would look up and be wowed. “I had done other treatments, tray ceilings, coffers, and other things, but I had never used wallpaper there,” Eyles says. “That room was a dining room and a very simple box, and it needed something more than just pretty furniture and pretty draperies. We had to push the envelope somehow.”

Since then, a wallpapered ceiling has become one of the designer’s favorite elements to incorporate into projects. She decorated a client’s guest bedroom ceiling with floral wallpaper in plum and peacock blue, framed with crown molding painted in the same blue. This was paired with purple draperies and a bed upholstered in a velvety plum.

“It’s so great that we have an opportunity with the fifth wall. We used to stick a chandelier up there and call it a day,” Eyles says. “Even in powder bathrooms where we have wallpaper, you can do a lacquered ceiling to have a little bit of sparkle up there.”

Another ceiling treatment—hand-painted Porter Teleo wallpaper—was used in another project to create a retreat for a client she describes as a “Renaissance man.” The rug and wallpaper became decor bookends, with patterns containing jagged streaks of another color. Set on an eggplant purple background that matches the wall paint, the work-of-art wallpaper gleams with streaks of gold that mimic “kintsugi,” the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold.

Both Lucas and her founding design partner, Sarah Eilers, consider the ceiling part of a room’s overall decor. With the proper treatment and color, small rooms can be made to feel larger, and bigger rooms can be transformed into something cozier. For example, adding beams to a tall, vaulted ceiling draws the eye upward, making it feel even taller. Likewise, painting a small room a lighter color can make it feel lighter and more open, while saturating a room with a deep, rich color can make it feel more intimate. 

Architecturally, if there’s unused attic space, homeowners can raise the height of a room’s ceiling, or factor in a vaulted or groin-vaulted ceiling and finish it with paint, natural stone, or even brick. Some beam treatments, constructed using authentic reclaimed wood salvaged from the flooring of old barns, most common in the American Northeast, can add instant warmth to an entire room.

Eilers saw this firsthand while working on a whole-home design project in Park City, Utah. She used hand-hewn beams throughout to give the house the appearance of having aged gracefully—larger beams in the big, light-filled living room, and slightly smaller beams on the nearby kitchen’s ceiling, which were covered in reclaimed, tongue-in-groove planks. Altogether, the combination of wood treatments added warmth and an Old World charm to a brand-new house.

There’s already so much you can do in an existing home, but designers say when your project is new construction, everything’s on the table.  

“You have more choices when it’s a house under construction because there’s a millwork team and painters already on the job,” says Lucas, noting the importance of considering ceiling treatments in the context of the whole house. “We try to think of everything in the beginning. It’s better than going back in after a home is finished.”