Painting The Ceiling A Little Darker (& Glossier)
We are doing Children’s Hospital stuff today, but a bunch of you noticed a foyer ceiling update in the background of yesterday’s post, so we owe you those details. We in fact knocked it out before the big kitchen paint-fest, but that post cut the line because it was too exciting to save for later and we have the patience of toddlers (not to be confused with having the body of a baby). We typically hate painting ceilings (big rooms = sore backs) but the foyer’s a relatively small swatch of space, so I ended up simply rolling the whole thing while Sherry knocked out some plain cutting in around the edges.
If you wanna see some ceiling painting in action, check out this video of us painting our nearby office:
Two coats later, we were high-fiving under the stars the star chandelier. It was well overdue. For the last few months it was sort of like our foyer was wearing a fancy outfit (pleasant painted walls) with dirty matted hair (bad yellowed ceiling). Not a good look.
Sherry got me on board with going one shade darker on the ceiling in there thanks to an image from Traditional Home. We already had leftover Revere Pewter paint from the walls and ceilings in our sink nook . It is the slightly darker square on the same paint swatch as Edgecomb Gray, which is what is on the foyer walls. And both are ranked among the best greige paint colors, so why not?
We truly like how it turned out, although getting accurate photos of it has proven a little rough.
Sometimes it photographs darker or grayer than it looks in real life (like the detail below, or the hallway shot from yesterday’s post). In person it is certainly noticeably darker than the walls, but thankfully not in an oppressive or gloomy way.
Typically we use a flat finish when we paint ceilings, but the leftover paint that we were using from the bathroom was eggshell. Turns out we truly like the extra hint of sheen because it glows a bit more in the window light, helping it still feel kind of airy in a way. You can see what I mean below:
But I am not sure this experience makes us ready to officially jump off The Flat Finish Ceiling Train permanently, since any brought in sheen ups the risk that dings, dents, or seams in the ceiling will show up more clearly. We simply lucked out that the foyer ceiling was in strong shape. But when we are buying paint specifically for ceiling use (like in Clara’s room) we will likely stick with flat simply to be safe. Update: simply realized we used eggshell on Clara’s ceiling too! The light (or perhaps it is the color?) simply reads truly differently in there, so it looks more matte compared to our foyer ceiling.
I do think it is safe to say that we are fans of a non-white ceiling though (hello blue in the sunroom!). Although I feel like we will likely end up going with a white kitchen ceiling since there will be so much going on already with the two-tone cabinets, painted walls, and the paneling.
Our Go-to Paint Colors
If you are having trouble picking the right color to paint your room, check out these detailed deep-dive posts about our go-to paints:
- The 12 Best White Paint Colors
- Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Gray
- Benjamin Moore Simply White
- Sherwin-Williams Pure White
- Sherwin-Williams Extra White
Psst- Wanna know where we got something in our house? Simply click on this button:
