Does it matter what others are doing? What do you like? I would do smooth walls and ceilings if I was building today. We had that in our 2 houses in the northeast. Our current house in So. CA is a Spanish style and has a texture. We didn't build it. We added a guest house and had that built with all smooth walls and ceilings. I much prefer the smooth look.

I prefer a smooth finish too. Where I live a textured finish is used to avoid the need to fully tape drywall joints. A hard smooth finish is achieved with "veneer plaster" on horizontally installed "blueboard".

They don't texture where I live. I think that's an 'out west' sort of thing.

I was always under the impression texture as used to hide imperfections. I'd never do it on a new house.

Smooth reminds me of cheap apartments

Orange peel looks dated

Skip Trowel looks unfinished

Knockdown looks the most modern and hides imperfections.

Ask anyone else and you'll get a completely different answer.
Its all about preference but generally in WI Knockdown is the standard and sometimes an upgrade.

One thing everyone can agree on is that popcorn finishes are the worst of them all.

Smooth. Don't care for any of the textures mentioned - they all look like inferior quality to me but I understand in other parts of the country, they are the norm. Do what you like.

Same textures as always. There isn't a September texture or a Fall texture. "In" is out!

My new build is smooth walls and smooth ceilings. In my area smooth ceilings are an upgrade because of the extra time and skill needed to accomplish it.

Smooth.

If you're considering any other option, just think about popcorn ceilings and how horrible they look.

Rmverb- just curious, what would be on your walls if not texture of some sort? ?

Smooth! It's a pretty big upcharge here because it requires more skill/labor. We didn't do it and I know I'm going to regret it! Textures just look tacky to me.

Interesting! I can honestly say I've never seen a smooth wall in east Texas. Or maybe never noticed one??

DH finished drywall with his dad growing up, and was surprised to hear so many people say smooth. Apparently getting it right is difficult, and patching (correctly) is even harder.

I'm not a fan of heavy texture (which is why I passed on having FIL hand texture it), so we're going with orange peel on the walls and knockdown on the ceiling. Smooth just isn't in the budget. And really, there's no way I'd come close to convincing DH of it. Thanks for all your input! Hopefully it doesn't come out looking outdated.

Mine are sand textured to match the old plaster walls. I had ceilings skip-troweled after the popcorn was removed and it looks good, not "unfinished".

super smooth is hard to do, knockdown is relatively easy to do and to patch if needed.

For kicks, here's FIL's custom "Texas Swirl" finish. People pay big money for this in Central North Texas! It's pretty, just not the look I'd like in a more modern home.

(And let's all just ignore the Summer Pudding paint color. Rest assured it will NOT make an appearance in our new house. Don't know what I was thinking when I picked it!!)

Here a level 5 smooth drywall finish is extremely expensive for upgrade. (PNW). We are doing a very light orange peel.

We have kids and smooth isn't great for homes where walls get abused. Difficult to patch, etc.

I had knock down ceilings in my last house and HATED it. Gross horizontal cobweb catchers.

:shudder:

I think they all are, in different parts of the country. You may actually have trouble finding one to do a texture that is uncommon in your area. Here smooth is the most common, but level of finish varies with the quality of the build.

It certainly is a regional thing - but I find it interesting that people who are used to textures think a smooth finish is difficult to repair. I think it's far easier than trying to replicate a texture. We're in a rental now in NC and living with texture and every single repair is visible. There's no way to feather out the repair and the stop/start is quite apparent. With a smooth finish, once the repair is properly feather out, the minimal texture from a good paint roller blends everything together. The technique is the same as feathering seams during install. Now I'm worried we'll have difficulty finding qualified tapers!!

It certainly is a regional thing - but I find it interesting that people
who are used to textures think a smooth finish is difficult to repair. I
think it's far easier than trying to replicate a texture.

Funny; I was thinking the same thing.

The knockdown finish is very difficult to match if you need to patch it.

I would just say choose what you prefer. However, if you are concerned about what is "in" due to resale or other concerns, then you could just tour some new homes and see what people are doing. Our current home (in the Pacific Northwest) has orange peel on the walls and knock down on the ceiling. While the knock-down is attractive, I personally would find it to be too much on the walls---plus much, much harder to repair than orange peel. We have made a few repairs on the walls and they are impossible to see now.

In the Northeast, there are a great variety of house styles: Early Colonial, Greek Revival, Victorian, Shingle Style, Colonial Revival, etc. The high end versions had smooth horsehair plaster suitable for wallpaper. The plastering trade was primarily Irish and highly skilled. In the 60's that evolved into rock hard smooth veneer plaster on "blueboard" (drywall with a special paper face for 1/16" skim coat plaster) first in commercial buildings and then in residences because it had a more durable finish, held paint longer and was cheaper, cleaner and faster than taped drywall. The idea of textured walls never caught on.

The texture that buttercup shows I believe is called imperfectly smooth. Textures are very regional.

My first house in Wyoming was explained to my friend and he messed around until I liked it. It looks quite like imperfectly smooth but with a tad more texture here and there. My second house was a super light orange peel but the house was a spec build. My next house will be as imperfectly smooth as I can get it. Perfectly smooth is very difficult to do.

Definitely do what you like and don't worry about regional trends. Your texture just might be the next new trend.

reesepb I don't know what that finish is but I do like it. Reminds me of the original plaster walls in our 1936 Colonial after a few families raised their kids there! It's subtle, and looks like real life not something manufactured.

Smooth walls will give me the most flexibility. And that does matter to me.

Smooth-- blueboard and plaster. When wallpaper comes back into vogue (which it will) you will curse those textured walls. The only exception I would make would be for an adobe or real Tuscan country style house, where again I'd do it with plaster, not mud thrown on drywall. Texture can be beautiful, but the kind that's done to make construction cheap isn't.