High Ceiling Painting

Painting ceilings and walls you cannot reach

High ceilings take the same paint as any other room; the work is in the setup. Vaulted living rooms, two-story foyers, open stairwells and cathedral ceilings make a house feel big, and they are the hardest spaces in it to paint. Safe Choice Painting paints high ceilings and tall walls as part of our interior painting work.

How high areas are reached

The right equipment depends on height, the floor below and the room layout:

• Extension poles for ceilings just above standard height, rolled from the floor.
• Ladders and planks for long walls and moderate vaults, set across two ladders.
• Rolling scaffolds for two-story foyers, tall great rooms and the peak of a cathedral ceiling, with locked wheels and padded feet.
• Stair platforms that sit level on the steps, so no one stands on a ladder over a stairwell.

Safety drives those choices. OSHA's scaffold rule, 29 CFR 1926.451(g)(1), requires fall protection for anyone on a scaffold more than 10 feet above a lower level, such as guardrails. Setups over a stairwell or an open balcony are planned with that in mind.

Why high ceilings take longer

From a scaffold, the crew can reach only a section of ceiling before the setup has to move. Each move means lowering tools, unlocking, rolling and relocking. Open floor space matters too, so the room is cleared more fully than for a standard ceiling. The estimate lists high areas on their own lines so you can see where the time goes. Our answer on how long it takes to paint a room covers standard rooms.

Getting a clean finish up high

• Flat paint. Light from tall windows rakes across a high ceiling and shows every seam. The Gypsum Association's GA-214 describes that kind of strong side light as critical lighting, which is why flat finishes are the safe choice overhead.
• Wet edges. Large ceilings are rolled in continuous passes so no lap marks dry in.
• Hand-cut lines. The angle where a vaulted ceiling meets a wall, and the line between two colors on a tall wall, are brushed by hand.
• Beams and ledges. Plant ledges and beams are wiped down and painted from the same setup.

Our ceiling painting page covers ceiling stains, cracks and paint choice in more detail.

Where we see high ceilings

Vaulted living rooms show up often in homes built in the 1980s and 1990s, and two-story entries in newer ones. In Corinth about 54 percent of homes were built from 1980 to 1999, and in Argyle about 54 percent were built in 2000 or later, by Census estimates. See interior painting in Corinth and interior painting in Argyle.

Textured high ceilings

High ceilings with popcorn texture can be painted, scraped or covered, but the setup is the same either way, so it is worth deciding before the scaffold goes up. Our popcorn ceiling removal page explains removal, which on a vaulted ceiling also means more plastic and more cleanup.

Color on tall walls

Two-story walls often meet a lower ceiling or a balcony, and where one color stops is a design choice. A color change works best at a real edge: an inside corner, a beam, the top of a ledge or the line of a stair stringer. Painting the ceiling and walls in the same soft color can make a very tall room feel calmer, while a slightly lighter ceiling makes it feel taller. We mark the breaks with you at the walkthrough, before any equipment goes up, so the setup only happens once.

Protecting the room

• Floors are covered edge to edge, and stair treads are padded where a platform rests.
• Scaffold wheels and ladder feet sit on pads so they do not mark wood or tile.
• Ceiling fans and fixtures have their covers taken off or are wrapped.
• Windows and fans are used for air flow.

Tall commercial spaces, like lobbies and meeting halls, are covered by our commercial painting service.

Churches and tall commercial spaces

Sanctuaries and lobbies have the same tall walls and ceilings on a larger scale. Our church painting page covers planning that work around services.

Nearby

• Interior painting
• Ceiling painting
• Interior painting in Corinth, TX
• Church painting