Vaulted ceilings aren’t just for church anymore. These highfalutin room lids can be an impressive statement that can add space and natural light and transform a plain-Jane living room into your own shrine to good taste in home design. Here’s everything you need to know if you’re considering this ceiling design idea.
Over the years, the phrase “vaulted ceiling” has grown to encompass much more than it originally did, to the point that many people think of high ceilings and vaulted ceilings interchangeably.
“Historically, vaulted ceilings referred to any arched ceiling below a roof and above walls, like a dome or a barrel vault,” says Connecticut-based architect Ming Thompson, principal of Atelier Cho Thompson. “Today, though, it means any type of interior ceiling that takes advantage of the space between the roof and what would be a flat ceiling.”
Cathedral ceilings, the kind most homeowners think about when they hear the words “vaulted ceiling,” are just a type of vaulted ceiling. Cathedral ceilings have flat, diagonal planes rising from the tops of the walls to a central high point and (usually) following the roof structure.
Other types of vaulted ceilings common in architectural design include barrel-vaulted ceilings (which are exactly what they sound like—like you’re inside a giant barrel on its side), groin vaults (two or more barrel-vaulted ceilings crashing into each other at right angles), rib vaults (like a groin vault but meeting at ribs on top), and dome ceilings. Barrel vaults are also known as tunnel vaults or wagon vaults. (A cupola is not a vaulted ceiling. It’s a separate structure like a small dome or turret that sits on top of a roof.)
The mainstream definition’s gotten loose enough to sometimes include sloped ceilings (also known as shed ceilings) as a type of vaulted ceiling—these have one high edge and one ledge and don’t have to be tied to the building structure.
If you want a room itself to be a statement piece, a vaulted ceiling will definitely fit the bill, if executed correctly. It can create a new spatial geometry that changes the scale of the room feel and adds grandeur with a capital G.
“If you have standard ceilings everywhere else, a vaulted ceiling’s a way to create this 'Wow!' moment,” San Francisco–based architect Monica Sanga says. “Walking from a uniform space to a vaulted ceiling gives you this narrative as you walk into this space.”
You also get more vertical space with vaulted ceilings, which means that you have more opportunities to let in natural light (or artificial light, like with chandeliers or other otherwise impractical light fixtures) and showcase your home’s surroundings.
“The increased wall area gives you more space for windows and therefore more light and potential views,” Rachel Bullock, cofounder and studio director of AD PRO Directory firm Laun Studio, in Los Angeles, says.
And even if your views are of the town tire fire, you can still use a vaulted ceiling to elevate the atmosphere of your home. “Vaulted ceilings provide generous space overhead,” Thompson says. “While they don’t add floor area, they do give a sense of airy grandeur, and can help cramped rooms feel more special and large. Vaulted ceilings also eliminate space that might be otherwise captured in an attic, which means you can more easily add useful skylights in the ceiling plane to provide more lighting to the space below.”
And, of course, the Gothic cathedral look can be great if your family includes a walker of the night. “It is the preferred ceiling type for vampires, but you do not need to be a vampire to have one,” Bullock jests.
Vaulted ceilings probably aren’t going to work for your average homeowner. The open space you create with a vaulted ceiling only goes up, which means you create more volume in a room but don’t increase the square footage. So it doesn’t expand your usable space except for certain functions like lighting (say chandeliers) and certain kinds of design elements, like when you want to create a place to show off your newly exposed wood beams.
So, in a world where the value of a home is often distilled down into what it can fetch on the real estate market versus what you spent on it, vaulted ceilings are not usually seen as adding to the bottom line. They could be even less desirable if putting in a vaulted ceiling involves losing attic space or part of the upstairs.
“If it’s a floor plate above your ceiling, you have to think about losing the square footage of whatever is above,” Sanga says. “The priority for most homeowners is square footage and resale value, so a vaulted ceiling is not often top of mind.”
But the calculus could be different if you’re already doing a necessary renovation. If you need to replace the roof anyway, it might be a good opportunity to rebuild the section differently—that’s really just adding value,” Sanga says.
If you’re putting a vaulted ceiling into an existing space, be prepared for a lot of extra headaches as you run into the realities of structural integrity, tricky electrical work, building codes, and more.
“Oftentimes people think, Oh, I can just take out this ceiling and expose the roof. And that’s not exactly how it works,” Sanga says. “There are a lot of things in a ceiling that are meant to be there structurally that you can’t easily take away, and there’s insulation and fire-code issues. A lot of times you need to have a regular ceiling in there. And if there’s a roof above, it can get a little bit more hairy.”
Indeed, when putting in a vaulted ceiling, what you don’t see is as critical as what you do. “Ventilation and insulation type are really important things to keep in mind,” Bullock says. “With an attic space, you vent the whole attic, but if you are holding tight to the structure, you are potentially trapping air and moisture in each bay of the roof structure. This means you either need to vent each joist bay or use closed cell insulation so that moisture doesn’t get trapped and create mold and other problems.”
People often overestimate how much space they have to work with too, Thompson says. Consult with professionals instead eyeballing it yourself or going by your own back-of-an-envelope calculations. You may find that the lofty ceiling you envisioned is going to end up looking much different after the facts bring you back down to earth.
“You might not have as open and large an area as you might be imagining,” she says. “Do some exploratory demolition with your contractor to see what’s there and what you are likely to end up with after doing the work.”
Yep. Pretty much nothing involving vaulted ceilings is DIY besides cleaning them (with extender dusters and ladders, of course). So cross this off your weekend DIY projects list and start looking up professionals who can handle potentially complicated jobs.
And we’re not just talking construction costs—your vaulted ceilings will likely continue to eat away at your budget even after the builders have gone home: Your energy bills will go up, especially when it gets cold.
“Vaulted ceilings do cost more to maintain than regular ceilings,” Thompson says. “Simply put, you are adding more cubic volume to your home, and you’ll need to heat or cool that additional space.”
You could always put in ceiling fans, of course, but then you’d run the risk of detracting from that fancy groin vaulted ceiling or the exposed beams you paid all that money for. Another option is skylights.
“If you have operable skylights or high windows, you can utilize the vault for passive cooling—it’ll pull the warm air out,” Bullock says. “But, in general, you are creating more air volume to condition, so it’s going to be more expensive.”
Sanga says where you live may somewhat mitigate the maintenance cost of vaulted ceilings. “In places like the North, with the cold air, you’re going to be spending more money on heating because the hot air will rise,” she says. “In the South, you want the heat to rise, so you it can be an asset to have a vaulted ceiling in the South or middle regions.”
Not every home is right for a vaulted ceiling. “I live in a historic brick row house, and this building is definitely not right for vaulted ceilings,” Thompson says. “We have small rooms and corridors, and the row house has a flat roof—it would look ridiculous with a vaulted ceiling, like putting a clown hat on top.”
Better candidates for vaulted ceilings, she says, include “generous midcentury homes or the top floors of sprawling historic homes.”
New homes give you a little more freedom to work a vaulted ceiling in, but you’d still have to think about the overall architectural design of the home. “We’d want the dramatic ceiling to be closely tied to the design concept, and we’d develop a design for the overall building massing and rooflines with the vaulted ceiling in mind,” Thompson says. “A large vaulted ceiling should typically be located directly beneath an exterior roof plane; adding one to a room under another room wouldn’t really make sense. We often, in new homes, experiment with feelings of alternating compression and expansion. For example, you enter into a low-slung entry then stride into a room with a soaring vaulted ceiling.”
When you’re looking for great rooms to add a vaulted ceiling to, think living spaces where lots of people can be together at once, like dining rooms, family rooms, and other spaces where the extra ceiling height would be welcome. Small or areas or rooms meant to be cozy or quiet, like bedrooms, studies, or bathrooms, aren’t usually good candidates for higher ceilings like these.
“The height shouldn’t be taller than the width or length of the room, because you don’t want the walls to feel tight against you and the ceiling feels cavernous,” Sanga says. “Light quality is really important. Make the windows in the room are appropriately sized and proportioned so the vaulted ceiling’s not in shadow.”
Adding that much volume to a room can also change its acoustics drastically and “make sounds waves bounce in strange ways,” Bullock says. It’s something to consider if you’re putting a vaulted ceiling into a room where sound quality is important, like a home theater. You may need to tap your interior design skills to dampen any echo effect—pillows, tapestries, strategically placed furniture, and so on.
And, finally, the point of a vaulted ceiling is to make a visual statement, so include them sparingly, lest you suffer vaulted-ceiling fatigue. “If every space is vaulted, you lose the impact,” Bullock says. “Better to save the drama for where it’s going to be most appreciated.”
