Decorate A Living Room With Cathedral Ceilings

Long down rods can lower your ceiling fan in a room with cathedral ceilings.

Cathedral ceilings in a room rise all the way up to the top of the house and, typically, have a sloping ceiling. This presents challenges in decorating. The elegance and spacious feeling this type of room inspires can cause your furniture to disappear. There are ways to incorporate decorating techniques in your home that make the most of a cathedral ceiling, yet still manage to give the area an intimate ambiance.

Instructions

1. Avoid crowding in a room with a cathedral ceiling. Don't overcompensate and place multiple small items around the room in an attempt to fill the room up. Utilize large sculptures and tall, bold silk flower arrangements to enhance all the extra space in the room, while avoiding a cluttered look.

2. Go large. Your furniture should be on a larger scale than a typical room. Massive wood furniture is ideal for this type room. Decorate in a grand style to complement cathedral ceilings.

3. Purchase oversized paintings and unframed canvas. They give the room a spacious contemporary feel. If you use smaller pictures, group them into sections with a theme to give the visual effect of a giant piece of art.

4. Paint your ceiling a shade or two darker than your walls. This dramatic effect makes the room feel as if it flows together, avoiding a cavernous feel.

5. Center your seating areas out from the wall spaces. This gives the room a cozy feel and prevents it from having a warehouse look. If space allows, fill two or three areas around the room with furniture groupings instead of using only one seating area.

6. Paint an accent wall with a complementary color. This pulls the eye to a focal point in the room, visually decreasing the space. The accent wall is often the wall you see upon entering a room from the front door or main entrance. Alternately, your focal point can be the wall everyone faces while sitting in the room, whether it is a fireplace or the entertainment center with the TV in it.

7. Add faux beams and crown moldings to your ceiling to visually lower the height and make the room feel cozy. This technique works well in a room with southwestern decor or a ranch style home, but it is not appropriate for a classic, elegant style.

8. Lower your ceiling fans and chandeliers by using extra long cording or down rods.

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