Rather difficult to represent. 36" base cabinets for some scale.

The vault is about 10', walls 13'.

10' walls.

13' walls.

How will anyone ever clean up there? Grease residue? Cobwebs?

living is one thing

here's our living room in a previous house(or rather, townhouse)

the foyer and the dining also had these catherdral ceilings going on..obviously photo doesn't show the whole height, they went on and on. if the bulb goes off in the chandelier you're doomed..:) well almost

they weren't vaulted though

now kitchen is different..should be more..human-scaled? ours was 9 or 10 feet high I believe..same was the family room. same floor. so you had some grand proportions, but alongside them non-grand ones. some shock and some relief:)

it was a semi open plan..so it all kinda worked, being different heights.

That's an interesting question how to work it out..I hope others, with better understanding of architecture, would say their opinion and suggest possible solutions?..

How will anyone ever clean up there? Grease residue? Cobwebs?

That's what I always wonder about. Unless one has servants, of course. My favorite is the second floor balcony or bridge with a great room overlook - a great room with wonderful exposed wooden beams and trusses. From the overlook, one gets to see the topside thick with dust and cobwebs closeup.

If you are having a hard time finding an example of something, there may be a very good reason for it; it may not be a good idea.

"The designer's guide to the golden ratio" http://www.creativebloq.com/design/designers-guide-golden-ratio-12121546

They would not only need servants, but also scaffolding! I'm NOT a fanatical cleaner, but building things that are impossible for mortals to keep even "sort of clean" seems ridiculous.

I have a good long story about changing lightbulbs in high ceiling that I will not share here.

I get that overall the GW forum is anti-high ceilings, but given that we are building a timber frame that is not two story, there will be some degree of vault... I'm specifically interested in how to determine the max ceiling height that would be appropriate. Thanks, Virgil for the link - very helpful. My concern about partially walling the kitchen from the living room, similar to this:

Mutiny Bay · More Info

was that in our current house plan it would cause the living room to be a square (24 x 24) instead of a rectangle in the inspiration photo. All of us (couple + architect) were concerned how that square living room might "feel" in the space. But looking at the link, I'm wondering if enough of the kitchen would be exposed to give the feel of the golden rectangle, since it shows a square - marked 8 on the drawing in the link. Welcome your thoughts.

(Re: maintenance concerns: there won't be any can lights in the ceilings. Telescoping duster and no bridge/second floor balcony.)

p.s. PPF. those graphics were really helpful too!

This was a kitchen photo I could find of vaulted timber-ish frame - ours is structural, I don't think this is, but I tracked down in a magazine that this ceiling is 18-feet, so I definitely think 22-24 feet is way outside my comfort zone.

Am I doing my math correctly to assume that if we decrease our room width to 20-feet and have a 10/12 roof, with 10-feet walls, then the vault height would be a more palatable 18-feet-and-change?

Shades Creek House · More Info

And this one was another raised ceiling in kitchen:

Rufty Homes - Kitchen · More Info

Is heating and energy conservation a concern?

Cubes where the room is not wider or longer in at least one direction than the ceiling is high are not particularly comfortable, similar to how large rooms with low ceilings are not particularly comfortable. In a cube, the room tends to start feeling shaft like, where a large room with a low ceiling often seems to sag or press down in the center.

Also, cubes are static and rectangles are not. It might be better if the ceiling was 15-16 if 24 is the largest dimension of the room. Peaks are a little different.

I lived in an apartment where the original parlor floors were essentially a golden rectangle. They had been lofted at one end (about 1/3 of the space) and it made the high ceiling in the remaining area kind of elevator shaft-like.

The apartments that maintained the original proportions were more comfortable spaces.

Of the above pictures Mutiny and Rufty seem fine because of the length of the room and the ability to experience the height from the opposite end of the room in some sort of perspective.

I actually find the Shades Creek kitchen proportions unpleasant. It makes a good picture but I don't think I would like working in that kitchen.

I am curious as to how many people with 8-9 foot ceilings vacuum or clean them on a regular basis. I am not sure the extra height makes rooms extra dirty? That said I had to clean my 14 foot LR with elaborate plaster cornices with an extention pole with brushes on it...I purposely did not have any lighting in that ceiling. I think the people who bought the apartment from my buyer put in recessed cans. (Not right in a 1830s house and very hard to change. A ten foot ladder is much harder to manage than an 8 foot ladder).

Nothing that says your roof structure and ceiling structure must be the same.

You could drop the trusses to a more comfortable height and frame the roof at any elevation.

Sticking to the golden ratio too rigidly will just drive you nuts, it's just a starting point.

^^ Agree.

A variation of interior spatial experience (that's architectural talk for higher and lower ceilings, and larger and smaller horizontal spaces) can be a wonderful and invigorating element in making a house "speak" to its inhabitants and enhance the living experiences. Frank Lloyd Wright was a master at this in his houses, as were many other architects.

The important question, however, is where should the "grand" spaces properly be and where should the "intimate" spaces be? What are "destination" spaces and what are "transit" spaces? And where should "transition" spaces be located between the larger and smaller spaces?

A building with a single, continuous high ceiling space is not as inviting, inspiring or comfortable (dare I say rewarding?), as one with strong design concept of spatial variety.

Ceiling heights and where to bring them down or up is one of the difficulties we are working through with out architect currently. (That and entry space, but both things are interconnected). It can be very tricky I agree!!

Thank you everyone, all really helpful comments. And doc5md, so glad we are not alone in finding this part tricky.

Virgil, great comments as touring a FLW house was my earliest experience of a place making me "feel" something. I was around 7 or 8 years old and it is actually one of my earliest memories because I remember it being "magical" to me. Probably aided by the fact it was elaborately decorated for Christmas.

The ceiling heights will vary in the rest of the house, but we are finding that a small house (1500 square feet) coupled with a timber frame, is quite limiting to execute everything we'd like. Our next house (provided we survive building this one enough to want to tackle another build) should give us more space to work with.

Re: heating and cooling, great questions. We are NW Florida so having the heat in the room rise is actually ideal. We might install under floor heat to help in the winter. Our current rental is 14.5 feet high in the main living with a crawl space and it hasn't been an issue and we've lived here several years through both a warm winter and a cooler-than-usual (even had snowflakes) winter.

And PPF, interesting thought on roofing. Our scenario is a bit unique in that we are doing a timber frame so our roof structure is actually SIPs that lay on top of the frame, so I'm not sure if that is modifiable in the same way it would be in a traditional framed house.

Thanks again, all... this thread helps me know that the current 22-24 is much too high for me, and I don't want to box the kitchen off to create a square living, so we are likely going to decrease the rooms width and wall height.

And if anyone else in a similar boat finds this thread someday, I found Lillian's kitchen (which she credits the GW forum as helping) to be inspiring for a timber frame/high ceiling kitchen as well: http://www.thekitchn.com/lilians-sunlit-159185

This thread was very helpful and interesting. Here are the ceilings in our new home. I find them very boring. I’m considering the skylight idea as we have them in our current home and love them. Chicago winters can be dark and depressing so skylights help a lot.

So, my question is does anyone have any ideas (affordable!) in addition to skylights and white molded beams? These are not my furnishing, my taste is much more transitionaL. All of the oak trim will be painted white and the wood floors will be stained a dark walnut. I’m looking for ideas of what to do with this fireplace. One thought is to cover up the top 2 levels with drywall and make the bottom a focal point with cool grained wood or granite or some other material. Cost effectiveness is key because we’re doing a lot to this home. Also, we’ll probably mount a 65” TV to the fireplace so we don’t want our materials to be too costly since a lot of space will be covered by the TV.

Just to clarify, the 3 sided fireplace is between family room (right side of photo) and dining room (left side). Both ceilings are really high and peak. The living room with the half moon window is next to (behind?) the dining room (also with a half moon) and next to the family room which runs the length of the first floor beyond the foyer. The family room ends with sliding glass doors to the deck and wooded yard.

1. Dining room w north exposure

Living room w east exposure

Family room w east exposure

Thank you so much! We plan to start this project in April 2019