Existing ceilings can provide ideas for your ceiling designs.
One of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance was an illusory painting of a sky populated with angels. This artwork was in the bedroom of the Duke of Mantua, on the room's ceiling. The work's artist understood the power of ceiling design. Today's ceilings don't need such elaborate techniques to be appealing, only some thought about the psychological impact of changing a ceiling's form, lighting and pattern. `
Low Relief Designs
Low relief ceilings are those that have some structure, usually a patterned one, extending slightly from the ceiling's surface toward the floor. The relief provides a break from the visual monotony of large blank spaces. Stucco is one means for imprinting thick, textural designs onto a ceiling to create low relief. Creating effects with stucco involves pressing a surface with a coarse or raised texture into the wet stucco. Sample surfaces include sponges, burlap and braided fabrics.
High Relief Designs
Coffered ceilings are another type of relief design. One of the most famous examples is the Pantheon, built by the ancient Romans. Coffers usually take the appearance of picture frames whose borders are formed by fluted molding. The coffers are more eye catching and stately than other relief designs like stucco. Take this fact into account when you're considering the net effect of the d cor for the entire room below the ceiling.
Non-Relief Designs
Flat, 2-D designs allow for a greater variety of ceiling ornamentation than using reliefs. An abstract painted pattern is one type of 2-D ceiling design. Abstract patterns can be stylized but still recognizable representations of familiar things, especially elements of nature like leaves and branches. Or the patterns can be , having no overt connection with optical reality. Use completely abstract patterns unless you want to direct the attention of the room's occupants to a particular subject.
A tromp l'oeil design is a 2-D image disguised as a 3-D one. Ceiling designs that apply tromp l'oeil, which means "fool the eye" in French, include clouds, realistically painted trees or things you might see in other environments when looking up. These designs tend to be much harder to create because of the high level of detail that realistic illusion requires. They are therefore more expensive to produce.
Lighting Designs
Ceilings with lights integrated in their structure can produce a feeling of organic harmony and balance that's lacking in ceilings without this integration. A simple type of ceiling design using this integration concept has circular openings for light fixtures. The light fixtures shouldn't extend beyond the ceiling's surface if you want the full effect of lighting integration.
You can increase lighting integration by cutting a large circular or rectangular recession into the ceiling. Envision this as a second ceiling below the existing one and with a gap between it and the existing one. Remove most of the center of this lower ceiling by cutting a simple shape like a large rectangle or oval. Place the lights around the gap on top of the lower ceiling, just hidden from view. This provides a balanced, soft lighting scheme for the entire room.
Tags: ceiling design, ceiling surface, completely abstract, entire room, light fixtures, lighting integration, lower ceiling