43 Vaulted Ceilings Ideas That Take Rooms to New Heights
Look up! There is no shortage of incredible vaulted ceiling ideas that go beyond dressing the home with a chandelier or ceiling beams. “The benefit of having vaulted ceilings is they give extra ceiling height that normally wouldn’t be available,” says Chelsea Thowe, lead designer at Forge & Bow in Fort Collins, Colorado. “The vaults add visual interest and make the room feel larger than it actually is.” If you are stuck with popcorn ceilings, for instance, ask your contractor if your home design is amendable to vaulted ceilings. They can truly make the space feel as if it’s a completely new construction.
“Vaulted ceilings give a great opportunity to pump up the personality of a room,” says Los Angeles designer Peter Dunham. “Are you looking to make it more rustic? More detailed and richer? Or is it to make it a more nautical feeling? When you have vaulted ceilings there’s so much more you can do than with just a flat ceiling.”
Interior designers have been using this trick for years to elevate living room design, bring coziness into a family room, and even transform sunrooms. And if you think that cathedral ceiling ideas are too grand, know that vaulted ceiling ideas can work with any house style—from modern farmhouse to midcentury-modern bungalows. Read on for 43 of our favorite designs.
Photo: Christa Tippmann Photography1/43Add Skylights
Skylights are one of the best design elements to add to a vaulted ceiling. “It brings in so much natural light and makes the space feel airy,” says Thowe. “The darker wall paneling makes the room feel more grounded and the large chandelier accentuates the tall ceiling while also bringing it down to a human scale.”
2/43Play With Architecture
Peter Dunham & Associates collaborated with architect Bob White, principal of Forest Studio, to achieve the overall direction of an English Arts and Crafts house. The clearstory windows all the way around bring in tons of natural light and create a sense of casual grandeur.
Photo: Sam Frost3/43Find Inspiration in Art
Dunham found design inspiration in a drawing of an Elsie de Wolfe house. His team collaborated with White to transform an otherwise standard-shaped dining room into something much more exciting. The double-chamfered cove-style ceiling with trim breaks up the monotony of yet another square room. Dunham sourced the ceiling light fixture with the client in France.
Photo: Gibeon Photography4/43Dig Into History
Working in collaboration with Pearson Group in Montana, Dunham created this guest house and planked the vaulted ceiling with vintage barn siding paired with raw plaster walls. “The planking warms up the natural ceiling height of the peaked ceiling and gives the room instant history,” he says. “I found this beautiful Rauschenberg piece for the wall between the windows. The bed and ottoman are custom, and the pretty blue velvet on the sofa is from Schumacher.”
Photo: Annie Schlechter5/43Lean Into Nautical
Through a partnership with architect Emily Trulson, Dunham decided to plank the entirety of the space, which was all drywall, to emphasize the nautical aspect, give a dose of style, and introduce a place for the light to catch. The clients found the two chairs at the Paris Flea, one draped with a vintage Hermès blanket. The vintage rug and table are from Hollywood at Home.
Photo: Ngoc Minh Ngo6/43Embrace Pattern
Take the unexpected route by treating vaulted ceilings as a mural. New York interior designer Young Huh brought drama by treating ceiling design as she would a mural. “It’s a wonderful way to incorporate even more color into a room,” Huh says. “To achieve something a little more subdued while still adding interest, continuing wall paneling onto a vaulted ceiling. Keep it the same color as the walls for a lovely, charming effect.” Color blocking not only draws the eye up, but it also helps disguise odd angles. For this Kips Bay project, she used Fromental’s custom Braque wall covering. A white chandelier tempered the rest of the great room design.
Photo: Ngoc Minh Ngo7/43Play Into Soft White Paneling
A monochromatic room feels relaxing, especially if the vaulted ceilings continue the palette. Here, Huh added simple yet elegant wall paneling in soft white, allowing the rich dark woods of the furniture to contrast with the rest of the subdued palette to make the space feel “breezy but with soul.”
Photo: Oberto Gili8/43Pair With Bright Blue
Daniel Romualdez Architects devised this kitchen in the Hamptons with a classic blue-and-white theme. The paneling on the walls, painted a vivacious blue, contrasts with the white shiplap on the vaulted ceiling—allowing it to be the perfect focal point for pendant lights.
Photo: Richard Mandelkorn9/43Balance with Large Windows
For a living room with large windows, vaulted ceilings make the space feel that much larger, especially paired with white walls.
Photo: Sean Litchfield10/43Bring on Big Pendant Lights
To fill the void between the vaulted ceiling and the rest of the dining room, Jennifer Morrison, founder and interior designer of Morrison Design House in Windham, Maine, selected a lighting design element above the kitchen island that vows to wow. These hand-blown glass Hector Finch pendant lights add beauty through their transparency. “It’s important to give the ceiling a point of visual interest,” Morrison adds. “Otherwise, it can feel flat.”
Photo: Oberto Gili11/43Create Curves with Wood Beams
In the family room of this 1930s mansion in New York decorated by S. R. Gambrel, vintage capiz-shell globe lanterns hang from the vaulted ceiling ribbed with curved wood beams. Painting it black enhances the design element against the white walls of the rest of the space.
Photo: Giovanni Photography12/43Match Wood Beams to Home Design
To modernize lines and maintain a clean aesthetic, Dominique Coffman, vice president of design for Design West in Naples, Florida, added natural design elements to seamlessly complement the vaulted ceilings and wooden beams, enhancing the architectural grandeur of the space and fostering a harmonious ambiance.
Photo: Blaine Jonathan Photography13/43Dress Up the Design Elements
Homeowners who want to make the vaulted ceiling a focal point of their interior design, should consider the way Design West approaches ceiling beams. Using a criss-cross wood-beam design at the pinnacle of the vaulted ceiling adds a touch of whimsy to the entire living space.
Photo: Björn Wallander14/43Appreciate the Romanesque Vault Ceiling
Stefano Pilati designed carved-stone seashell sconces to accent the vaulted shower in a Parisian duplex. The self-supporting Romanesque vaulting fits seamlessly with the rest of the bathroom design.
Photo: Scott Frances15/43Coordinate the Wood Beams
When the architects Taryn Christoff and Martin Finio revamped a primary bedroom, they took the natural material down to the wood floors, which complemented the paneling as well as some of the home decor elements of the room.
Photo: Pieter Estersohn16/43Go Grand
Theater producer Daryl Roth commissioned architect Thierry Despont to renovate her beach retreat on Long Island’s East End. A custom-made Jeff Zimmerman light fixture from R 20th Century hangs from the barrel-vaulted great room. Skylights and large windows filter natural light, while the stone fireplace makes the room feel even grander.
Photo: Douglas Friedman17/43Outline the Vaulted Ceiling
Sometimes the smallest details make the biggest impact. In the primary bedroom of this Nantucket compound, decorated by Simon Jacobsen, every corner is outlined in black—a welcome design note to break up white walls. Delicate ceiling lights bring the focus to the plush rug.
Photo: Björn Wallander18/43Embrace Trusses
In the primary bedroom of this Veere Grenney–designed London town house, black-painted trusses provide structure and character.
Photo: Aimée Mazzenga19/43Embrace the Challenge
For a primary bedroom with lots of odd ceiling angles that feel very choppy and an ultra-low pitch in certain places, Houston-based interior designer Paloma Contreras faced a major ceiling design challenge. Her fix: tent the room in a striped wall covering so it would feel cozy, inviting, and translate all the space’s angles into something more pleasing to the eye.
Photo: Aimée Mazzenga20/43Tie it All Together
Adding reclaimed white oak beams to the ceiling in this Contreras-designed living room not only adds a sense of patina and architecture to the living room, but also serves as a common thread with the other design elements—like the built-in bookshelves and the natural wood side table—found throughout the space.
Photo: Adam Albright21/43Decorate Around the Vaulted Ceiling
When Des Moines–based interior designer Amanda Reynal started working on a loft room, she noticed that it was practically unused by the homeowners. She redesigned the area to become a home office but left the dark-stained exposed wood peaked roof untouched. “It is original to the 1970s architecture and has a worn patina,” Reynal says. “In order to keep the ceiling as a distinctive separate element, I chose to paint the existing wood floors and the new built-in bookshelves. The fresh and crisp palate keeps the dark ceiling from making the room feel heavy.”
Photo: Adam Albright22/43Bring in Bold Stripes
Because of the dormers on the front of the house, Reynal chose to wallpaper this entire ceiling in a fun and bold stripe. “This accentuates the dormers but does not compete with the rest of the room,” she says. “I let the ceiling design take center stage here and kept the walls crisp white.”
Photo: Sarah Dorio23/43Hide the Angles
This vaulted ceiling—the result of two vaulted cross gables—works, in spite of angles coming at you in all directions. The team at Cloth & Kind enveloped it in a rich, smoky-chalky black. “This unified the space and added visual interest so the eye was drawn around the room to the furnishings and not the ceiling,” says Atlanta-based partner and principal designer Tami Ramsay. Sometimes you want the volume of a vaulted ceiling but architecturally you need it to also recede.”
Photo: Martin Vecchio24/43Create an Artisan Moment
To highlight this exquisite groin vaulted ceiling—the handiwork of 1920s Detroit artisans—Cloth & Kind painted the ceiling a light green and then contrasted it with a darker shade on the gorgeous Art Deco metal fretwork that defined this delicious architectural detail. It is impossible for the eye not to go to this focal point, notes Ann Arbor–based partner and principal designer Krista Nye Nicholas.
Photo: Don Freeman25/43Whitewash Wood Beams
Jayne Design Studio opted to up the ante on the vaulted ceiling with white-washed beams that added much-needed character. “The scale of the room demands the additional ceiling height,” says William Cullum, senior designer at the New York–based studio. “We painted the ceiling ecru to tone in with the beams, and continued the wall color behind the beams on the end walls to exaggerate the feeling of height.”
Photo: Don Freeman26/43Evoke a Night Sky
This breakfast room is in a polygonal projection off the kitchen and has a folly-like quality. The vaulted ceiling, which Jayne Design Studio painted a deep cobalt from Benjamin Moore, adds a sense of depth, especially at night when the Art Nouveau light fixture is lit. It feels like it’s open to the night sky, Cullem notes.
Photo: Don Freeman27/43Work in Metal
Previously, this enclosed porch off the primary bedroom had a flat ceiling. Jayne Design Studio removed it and replaced the beams with a metal structure designed to incorporate a central ceiling fixture based on 20th-century Viennese prototypes. The walls are painted a smoky lavender that fades away and lets the landscape in.
Photo: Don Freeman28/43Revamp a Garage
Jayne Design Studio took an unfinished garage space and transformed it into a guest bedroom. Cladding the walls and ceiling with shiplap evokes the feeling of being in a, well, ship. “The irregular architecture offers a lot of charm and the continuity of the boards ties it all together,” Cullum says.
Photo: Bess Friday29/43Play with Stripes
Designers are embracing stripes to bring added interest to ceiling height, and Bay Area interior designer Marea Clark Interiors gives a perfect example. This is the entry of an over 100-year-old house with dark hardwood floors and wall paneling. Clark added the striped wallpaper on the ceiling to make it fresh and playful. “It enhances the existing architecture and gives the space a tented-like quality,” she says.
Photo: Werner Segarra30/43Combine Textures
Matthew Boland of MMB Studio in Scottsdale, Arizona, is all about adding texture to make the ceiling beams stand out. He used a vinyl wall covering from Thibaut that looks like stitched leather panels to further enhance the sumptuous design approach. “The room is so lush and rich that it needed patina and texture,” Boland says.
Photo: Werner Segarra31/43Embrace Repetition
This hall is a repetition of an arched opening—a painted plaster groin vault allows for the shade and shadow of the reflections to activate the ceiling. “A flat ceiling would not have offered that drama,” Boland notes
Photo: Jacob Snavely32/43Add a Focal Point
To add drama without too much flair, create a visual endpoint. In this home, the ceiling height change draws the eye up to the beautiful architectural focal point. “If ceilings are too tall, it can create a lot of negative space above the furniture removing the aspect of a cozy room,” says Lina Galvao, interior designer at the Curated Nest in Greenwich, Connecticut. “Beams or an oversized light fixture can fill in the negative space and help draw your eye down to the scale of the furniture at eye level.” This makes the room feel warm, inviting, and luxurious.
Photo: Jacob Snavely33/43Embrace White Walls
The team at the Curated Nest takes white walls to new heights by wholeheartedly leaning into the palette and playing with texture—from a plush rug to the velvet bench or the multitiered chandelier that takes the gaze up to the vaulted ceiling.
Photo: Meghan Bob Photography34/43Try Two Ceiling Height Approaches
The living room of this 1929 Beverly Hills home once looked too wide for its height—years earlier, a sun porch had been added to the space throwing off its original proportions. Karen Harautuneian of Hub of the House Studio transformed the sun porch into a dining room, kept its flat ceiling, and then raised the living room’s ceiling for both volume and proportion while adding beams and grasscloth for texture. “The additional ceiling height balances out the proportions of the living room while the dining room with its lowered ceiling creates a cozy dining spot overlooking the yard.
Photo: Kat Alves35/43Embrace Cathedral Ceiling Flair
Kristen Elizabeth Design incorporated vaulted ceilings into this country villa because it was consistent with the architectural style of Spanish Revival. “The great room is the first main room that people walk into and the vaulted ceilings give the real wow factor,” says principal Kristen Fiore.
Photo: Bria Hammel Interiors36/43Play Up Design Features
The warmth of exposed beams against other neutrals like cozy leather chairs and a stone fireplace is what makes this room by interior designer Bria Hammel. “To make the living room from [this] project feel as spacious and grand as the lake view out their window, we knew a vaulted ceiling was an architectural detail we wanted to incorporate,” she says. “A vaulted ceiling allows us to get more creative with light fixture sizing (the bigger, the better!) and unique structural elements like exposed beams, shiplap, and more.”
Photo: Erin Konrath Photography37/43Double the Room Footprint
“Vaulted ceilings can make a small room seem immensely larger,” says interior designer Laura Chappetto Flynn of Element Design Network in the Chicago area. “Although the footprint of the room remains the same, the additional height of the ceiling creates the appearance of much more space.” Here the ceiling height gives the home office spot added panache.
Photo: Stock Studios Photography38/43Allow for Airiness
Vaulted cathedral ceilings add grandeur to the space. “The goal behind creating these vaulted cathedral ceilings was to expand the vertical dimension of the volume,” says Philip Consalvo, AIA, principal of PJCArchitecture in New York. “By elevating the ceilings, we achieved a dual benefit: we enabled the interior space to have a sense of airiness and lightness, and also established a connection between the home and the sky through strategically placed skylights.”
Photo: Justin Miers39/43Bring on the Red
The owner of this property wanted a transitional home that would blur the distinction between the interior and exterior spaces. To make that dream come true for them, Bruce Bockus, AIA, LEED AP, architect and chairman of Bockus Payne, in Oklahoma City, carried the exterior materials of stone and red steel into the interior of the residence and vaulted the interior ceilings. “The use of red steel is an eye-catching detail—the owners like it so much they named the home ‘Red Steel,’” he says.
Photo: Justin Miers40/43Frame It
Vaulting certain rooms in the home creates a dramatic transition as you pass from a lower flat ceiling to a higher vaulted ceiling. “This sudden increase in light, volume, and ceiling height takes the eye up and out through the expanse of glass that connects the room visually and experientially to the outdoors,” Bockus says.
Photo: Morten Smidt41/43Add Visual Lines
Sarah Jefferys, principal of Sarah Jefferys Architecture + Interiors in New York seamlessly blended vintage charm with contemporary flair in this expansive living and dining area. “The cabinetry and wood beams are original, while the flooring, furniture and lighting are more modern, creating an exciting mix of styles,” Jefferys says. “With the cathedral vaulted ceilings enhancing its spaciousness, it’s an airy yet cozy haven for the family to gather and spend time together."
Photo: Natalia Robert42/43Accent with White Beams
Preserving the inherent vintage charm of the 1,640-square-foot, three-bedroom 1961 midcentury home was the foundation of this remodel carried out by Jennifer Verruto, founder of Blythe Interiors in San Diego. Tasked with renovating a combined 300 square feet of kitchen and primary bathroom space, Verruto relied on innovative storage solutions to optimize the functionality of both rooms. “The meticulously curated kitchen pays homage to the home’s vintage character while catering to contemporary needs,” Verruto says.
Photo: Tim Williams43/43Embrace the A-Frame
“An A-frame home itself reads as a moment in time that you can play up organically,” says Dan Mazzarini, principal and creative director of BHDM Design. “You have an opportunity to be referential and retro where you want to be, but it can be tricky for spatial planning as the floor plans get tighter as you move up in level.” So that the homeowners could live large in some of the smaller spaces, Mazzarini and his team designed this A-frame to complement and capture the surrounding landscape. The property was originally designed by architect Ikuyo Tagawa nearly 50 years ago. It has 27 skylight windows built into the steep-pitched roof to capture glimpses of vibrant foliage and snowy peaks.
