Entering a luxuriously decorated and furnished home with spectacularly high ceilings can certainly be breathtaking. The immediate sense of space and luxury and openness is amazing. This is one of the reasons a large number of model homes are built on these designs. And many home buyers are so “wowed” by the elegance of carefully finished and perfectly decorated model homes that they decide they can and want to reproduce the effect in their own homes. The challenge is that it is making the same space feel like home to your family might not be as easy as it looks.
There are actually several things to consider before remodeling your home to match the soaring ceilings of some new construction:
1. Design, decoration and furnishing of rooms with high ceilings require some skill. High ceilings can create living spaces that feel cold and impersonal without the appropriate design, decoration and furnishings. The details
of the room must work with the architectural style of the house and the main function of the room. These factors will determine the type of ceiling that is appropriate, as well as the styles of windows, floors, fireplace, doorways, furniture and decoration. A major consideration will be how to fill the large amount of overhead space between your furnishings and the ceiling.
2. Mechanics and cost of heating and cooling rooms with high ceilings. No matter what kind of heating/cooling system you have, high ceilings leave a large amount of space and air to be conditioned. This might not make sense in these days of environmental concerns and soaring fuel costs. Although there are ways to deal with heating and cooling rooms with high ceilings (such as solar panels, skylights and roof windows, and radiant panels), these rooms will still be more expensive to heat. In consistent moderate climates, high ceilings might not result in great differences in heating/cooling costs. But in regions of cold winters or hot summers, these high ceilings might create a real strain on the budget.
3. Does the unused space feel like opulence or waste? Your answer to this question might reflect your family budget. It might also reflect your sensibilities about respect for the environment or even about social responsibility. When you walk through a home with tall ceilings and a large amount of unused space, do you see extravagance or waste? The question for your family might be whether you can afford to pay for unused space – both construction and heating/cooling – or do you need to maximize every inch of space in a house?
The warning to remodelers to “think before you build” applies to design as well as construction. Before you remodel with a twenty foot ceiling, stop and think about whether it makes sense for your family.
Other helpful articles:
Introduction to Contracts
Contract Checklist
The Major Costs for Remodeling
