Smooth is a more sophisticated look in my opinion. If you have a choice, go smooth.

Where I live in the SF Bay Area, standard builder's grade is knock down texture on both walls and ceilings. It's what I have in my house. I definitely like the look of non-textured walls and ceilings but I understand that texture is much more forgiving when it comes to unevenness, filling holes, etc.

I've always assumed that walls and ceilings generally have the same texture.

Smooth ceilings .

Smooth walls, smooth ceilings.

Smooth get my vote, too.

Smooooooooooooooooooth!!!!!!!!!!!! We just paid a whole pile of money to have our 1970's textured (granted they were popcorn) ceilings regyprocked.

Depends on where you live. Out West texture is not as declasse as it tends to be regarded in the East.

For a kitchen surface, though, even the ceiling, go smooth in any case. Think of trying to clean that particular kind of noxious greasy kitchen guck from textured plaster - ugh.

Smooth ceilings were absolutely nonnegotiable for me and it cost us quite a bit more.

Absolutely Smooth! I'm with blfenton, in that we just dropped big $$$$ to remove the popcorn!

I had heavily textured walls and ceilings in my last house and lost a good amount of elbow skin to it. Watched both my nephew and an old boyfriend fall on the stairs (not at the same time) and take off the front of their knee skin. Not a fan of that stuff.
I know the knock down isn't as deadly. My sister is a big fan of skip troweling but I'm wary of anything trendy and permanent. It does look nice, however.

We're having a guy do a skim coat of plaster over our drywall, it's a nicer 'flat' IMO than the drywall flat. My friends had it done and it really looked nice and had a nice 'plaster-ey' feel to it.

I like smooth too. I am in NY and we don't have knockdown anywhere. Some people did stucco years ago in a faux spanish look and it is usually the first thing changed by new owners.

It's not for everyone, but another option is a wood ceiling. We definitely did not want to repeat the textured ceiling from the old kitchen, but smooth didn't seem quite right to me either. We put in narrow tongue and groove, painted white so it looks like beadboard. Did it ourselves, and it was rather time intensive, not a cheap way to go, but so worth it in the long run. It's something I totally love about our kitchen.

I have textured and it is a pain to paint, a paint to keep clean and a paint to patch up since I took out my old fluorescent light in the kitchen and installed recessed lighting. I will now only have smooth if given a chance.

In our old house (which we bought), we had smooth ceilings and they were really nice. In our new house, we have knockdown. I would have preferred smooth, but the added cost wasn't worth it to us. Plus, with the higher ceilings, I don't think it's as noticeable as it would be in a room with 8' ceilings.