The Forgotten Fifth Wall

The Forgotten Fifth Wall

There’s no better time to freshen up the look of your home than now. You can bring the sense of renewal inherent to the season into your own environment with beautiful color. Where to start? Look forward to the season by looking up.

Ceilings are often the Forgotten Fifth Wall in a room. Too often, little thought is given to a ceiling’s contribution to the overall room design, which is typically just coated in some ubiquitous white paint.

Look at your ceilings from a new perspective. Color, sheen, pattern, and texture on the ceiling can transform the entire look and feel of a room. Here are some ideas to consider:

Warm it Up
On the flip side, a large room with high ceilings can feel impersonal or unbalanced sometimes, with furnishings, floor coverings and accessories visually occupying the bottom half of a room, leaving the top bare. Experiment with a deeper color on the ceiling in this case. A rich cocoa, in a soft sheen such as eggshell or pearl immediately cozies up and balances a large open space with style.

Dress it Up
Consider experimenting with glazes on your ceiling, including metallic and pearlescent effects. Benjamin Moore offers a complete line of specialty finishes. Watch videos  and learn how-to techniques for glazes here.
Our specialty plasters can elevate your ceiling to an art form, adding texture, color and dimension. Click here for ideas you can try yourself or explore with your professional specialty finish contractor.

Open it Up
Make a small room or room with a low ceiling feel larger by keeping the color contrast between the walls and ceilings to a minimum. A pale yellow ceiling over wheat colored walls allows your eyes to gently travel upward without a stark demarcation of a bright white ceiling (think of how the sky naturally lightens in an ombre effect as it approaches the sun).
Use a flat sheen paint for the best effect.  Benjamin Moore Waterborne Ceiling paint  has been specially formulated for an ultra flat finish. It absorbs light, and has the lowest reflective quality of any ceiling paint on the market, so it hides imperfections and prevents light from bouncing off in distracting directions, leaving you nothing but pure, beautiful color overhead.

Wrap it Up
Ceilings truly are a blank canvas for your creative expression (bonus: you don’t have to worry about smudgy fingerprints or furniture nicks). And painting your ceiling is a budget-friendly way to give any room in your home a new, inviting look. With a stunning ceiling to look at, it’ll be easy to keep your chin up even in a tight economy!