Believe me, I've looked into this both for front door and some interior hallway doors. It just can't be done. In reality, an 8' ceiling isn't even really 8' - sort of like a 2x4 isn't really 2x4. If only...

No, unless you prefer a transom less than one foot high. Which looks very odd, and is a questionable value, IMO!

I have transoms above every door on the first floor of my 1965 house. However the divider at the tops of the doors is very narrow. In the living room the effect is floor-to-ceiling and nearly wall-to-wall glass.

They are standard 6'8" doors and the transoms have a glass area of about 11" high.

Some antique houses here have fanlights as in your photo and eight foot ceilings although those doors are usually about 6'6" instead of the modern 6'8".

So in my experience, yes, you can have transoms with 8' ceilings and a reasonable appearance.

@palimpsest Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I know you're still active, and I was wondering if you have a picture of your interior doors and transoms? My husband and I just bought a mid century home, and we're planning a pretty extensive rejig of the main hallway, during which every interior door is getting moved. Which means I have the opportunity to install much cooler doors, and yours sound pretty cool.

Actually we have converted the three back exterior doors to 8 ft tall doors and the main interior door on the first floor to an 8 ft door (we had to cut this down a bit, it's a little under 8. (This is not installed yet, we are restoring/renovating the first floor.

But here is the front door, and we will retain the direct set transom when we replace the slab. You can see that the windows also touch the windows in the adjacent rooms. They do in most rooms in the house.

@palimpsest Thanks! What was the reason you got rid of the transoms in favor of a solid door?

So we could get a more transparent feel. The conventional french doors had a heavy frame. We also had to create a pocket in the ceiling for window treatments to work with these because the middle doors swing in, the others are sliders. We need window treatments because there is no view and there are only flowers and such part of the year.

Our house was built with a transom window over the front door and we have 8ft ceilings throughout our whole house. Yes, you can definitely do this!

this is my front door with transom window! We have only 8 ft ceilings throughout including by our front door!