I think there are myriad schools of thought: some say by painting it the same color (or similar) it heightens the feel of the ceiling; others swear against that. Some say a low ceiling should be in the flattest finish possible (so as to help the ceiling "disappear"); others say the ceiling should be in a glass so as to reflect the light. Blah blah blah. There are no real rules. Now having said that (!), we did a variation of what my sympathetic friend laxsupermom suggested: our (9' ceiling) is painted a 50% version of our walls (which is similar to your goal color). With all the white we have going on in our kitchen I couldn't take another white surface. I was right. It doesn't read as COLOR but it also doesn't read as WHITE. To quote Goldilocks, it's "just right." (Our substantial crown is bright white [matching the cabs], and it doesn't appear odd to have the white bifurcating the blue.) In our penultimate house we had an enormous living room (something like 25' x 15'), with an 8' ceiling. Because of the size of that room the ceiling felt low. The walls were dark and paper bag brown in there (again with white trim), but that ceiling I painted the sheerest blue I could find (a DKC shade). I loved it, but it didn't help the ceiling feel taller! It was just a soft, easy-on-the-eye take on a pale ceiling. (Li'l Bit is "helping" me type and I am tired of fighting with him [he has pneumonia, so I am trying to not bark at him], so I know there are heaps of typos, etc. in here. Happens!)

Hi again! My island is 51" wide and 62" deep - the granite was actually just installed last night so now you can really see the lighting scenario! I think it would support only ONE of the basket weave pendants posted b/c that is 23" in diameter so I'd hang it really in the center. I think it could support two pendants of a traditional kind if they were between 10 and 20" in diameter, you know? I feel like I'm fighting the industrial pendant trend - and it's not because I don't like how it looks! It's just that everyone puts them in and they all look the same and in three years, something else will be the "everyone" option, you know? Can't decide now if the basketweave up there will bring in the pretty coloring and balance the granite, adding interest up in the air, OR detract. What do you think?

I guess it depends on what one's used to Standard 8' ceilings here were a challenge to me in our new house, because it was the lowest ceiling heigh I ever had. I'm not from the US and other countries I lived in had a different standard that was higher ceiling(maybe due to metric system lol). Growing up in the older part of a very old big city-ceilings were even higher. But I loved the house a lot and was willing to work with whatever it had. And it had 8' ceiling everywhere but the entry(which by the way was altered by the previous owners to become higher) and the living room. 7 in the dining but during remodel we were able to raise them up a foot. My way of handling the thing was: a) a thought of crown moulding-previous owners put it in their master bath(tiny supermodest space really)-but I swear to you it looked at least a foor higher than the adjusting bedroom. this thought never became reality though because expenses grew and had to give up on some things. crown moldings were the first to go. lol b) skylights. previous owners had installed several and they drastically change perception of height and space..for the better. so we installed another one when we had our addition built. It also helped to break rectangularity of the room..we also didn't put a door between it and a master bath but left arch opening between them (the toilet got its own small room of course). Otherwise we'd be left with extremely boring room that's too long, too dark, and doesn't inspire any desire to stay there. Giving it more depth and light helped tremendously c) and very important as I agonized over it. Painting the celings the same color-or the color that would look like the same color(which was, in our case either 50% or 66% percent of the initial formula), as the walls. The lines blend, you don't have this feeling the ceiling is about to fall on you. I'm 5.4 so not tall at all..but I can be sensitive to spaces, and sometimes weirdly sensitive. Part of my physique. Lol. d) ditching some common rules. I did install central fixtures where it made sense, and pendants, and sconces..and it took attention away from the lower ceiling, because now you had something interesting to look at instead of calculating ceiling height I have table lamps and floor lamps too, so layers of lighting. I read so much about it all and was in that state of don't do this and don't do that..until I became very tired of it and just took from all this reading whatever I deemed helpful and disregarded everything else. Freedom! now your ceilings are lower, and your kitchen sounds challenging. Regarding kitchen-Kitchen forum is (justly so) considered the best in the matters of planning and advice on everything kitchen, so post your plan there and I believe you'll get many helpful thoughtful answers, regarding layout, workability, etcetera They are very sensitive to specific needs of specific person/family in a specific kitchen, and your plan with dimensions and if possible photos of the space will be very helpful to them to suggest things specific to your kitchen tailored to your needs/wants/budget etc. If you ask very general question it's great when you just want to have an interesting discussion. But if you're willing to get specific advice, and often very good one, I highly advise Kitchens forum. Just copy-paste your question there, and add even a basic rough plan with dimensions. And several pics to show different walls and how kitchen connects to other rooms in the house. I remember myself daring to ask on some site that had this option "Ask a designer" a general question "What do I do with low ceiling" and I got a very kind but very standard answer to paint everything white. It's okay, one can paint everything white of course; especially works well with high ceilings, architectural moldings, and in Paris lol), but didn't provide me with any insight. Sorry for the long post!

Any clues in the attic above? Say, a patch in the attic floor, or can you see the ceiling patch from up there? I'm guessing from the size and floor plan that this house was probably built by a fairly well off original owner. Here's a crazy thought. Maybe at one time there was a face sink in this bedroom, to the right of the closet. That wasn't at all uncommon, though I'd more expect it in what was probably the master bedroom (front of the house). Let's say that the sink was initially supplied only with cold water. (Stay with me here, I'm speculating.) The owners wanted more comfort first thing in the morning, so they installed a small water heater in the corner of the closet next to the sink. The cold water from the sink plumbing went in the bottom of the water heater, and the hot water was drawn off the top. That would explain the two pipe stubs, and the height difference. But you have only 2 pipes, so how was it fueled? The absence of a gas stub, and the fairly large amount of soot around the area, might suggest that it was oil fired. The closet doesn't seem very roomy, so they might have fed the oil to it from a small kerosene bottle nearby. Maybe it was a water heater like this.