My own feeling is that the answer is no. My wall colors are a cream and the ceiling is just slightly lighter but I still find it jarring, especially in the larger spaces such as the living room and bedrooms. It looks fine with the terra cotta red of the dining room but slight variations in color just don't look good, at least in my house. If I had to do it over again I would have painted the walls and ceiling both Cozy Cottage, but that's hindsight. Others may have different opinions of course.

If you are using pale colors on the wall and white trim, I would recommend that you wrap the whole room in your wall color...ceiling included. Make sure you look at a sample board (two coats on an 20" x 30" foam core sheet is good for this) up against the ceiling, and if it goes dark, have your painter lighten it for the ceiling.

Counting on light reflected from the ceiling won't do what you want it to do...it will just call attention to itself, to the detriment of your room scheme. You would think it would, but white just looks dreary in a room that doesn't get a lot of light.

If you use a lot of table lamps, placed everywhere you want a pool of light, and use barely off-white fabric shades so that the light can get through as well as up and down, I think you will get a much warmer, glowing effect. As a wise designer of my acquaintance often says, when you light everything, you light nothing.

I'm listening, I truly am. :)

I'm planning on creamy beige walls in my living room, halls and half of my dining room. The other dining room wall (shared with the kitchen) will be the same sage as the kitchen and that green will wrap around onto a very narrow partial wall in the living room. In other words the beige and a bit of sage will share the same ceiling in places (similar to an accent wall). Does the ceiling go the predominant color, i.e., beige?

Right now my walls and ceiling are the same color, but it's an offwhite. I like the flow and way shadows play.

I compromised. My bedrooms and baths have white ceilings and trim with creamy ivory walls. They look good. I had my painter start in the room I cared least about (my office) because of the amount of time I spend there and what I'm doing. So I tried the white ceiling. Honestly, in certain light you can't tell that the walls and ceilings are a different color.

Because of the way the hall emerges into a wall with space above it, I opted to have the walls and ceilings in the hall painted the same color, SW Antique White. I love it. Like everyone has said, the space is enveloped in this one great shade, forming its own shadows and highlights. No noticing wall/ceiling joins. My painter's gotta love the less cutting in.

So, I'm gonna do the same in my big space. I think it'll look really nice. Thanks everybody for weighing in. I really needed to see it and feel it in my own house to be convinced.

Did you look at the ceilings thread in the Gallery?

Holy carp! Un-freaking-believable. And here's me feeling so cutting edge having painted my ceiling the same color as my ivory walls. Woo-hoo!