What the painters did looks "correct" if you will, to me. The vertical sufaces, or mostly vertical, are painted the wall color. That looks right...

Nice wall color...very cozy and warm!

That would drive me crazy.....

Paint the ceiling under the tray the same as the walls.

And maybe paint everything except the top flat part of the ceiling the wall color.

I have to agree with terriks. Paint everything the wall color except for the top flat part of the ceiling.

My thinking is just the opposite: paint the lower flat parts white, and everything higher white also, whether they are horizontal or slanted.

Painting those flat bits the same color as the wall will bring the ceiling right down on top of you and negate the purpose of using two colors.

Paint everything beige except the very top of the ceiling if you want to make the space seem taller.

Personally, I wouldn't even paint the very top of the ceiling stark white. I would paint it a lighter shade of the wall color to keep it from looking like a lid.

Whatever white or off-white you choose I would go from the the flat part of the ceiling up with ceiling color, slants, verticals and horizontals.

I'm with terriks re not painting a straight white. I would do a mix with the wall color. At our last house the ceiling color was a 10 percent or so mix of the wall color with like a linen white .... Stunning if I may say so myself. The actual percentage depended on the wall color. If the wall color is really strong you might need to tone it down even more

It looks weird because it's not the same color as the walls in the second photo.

Interesting. I painted our master bed room a couple of years ago and did something similar to what your painters did. I painted all vertical or near vertical slants the wall color and all horizontal the ceiling white. That's just the way I like it.

I think for the dark walls to visually continue, everything should be painted wall color except for the ceiling.

Before committing, have them paint one end of the room and see if you like it.

Folkvictorian, what you have is a type of vaulted ceiling, not a tray ceiling. Whatever color you paint it, the ceiling begins at the lowest flat horizontal plane and everything above is the vault.

Oh my. I don't know what I'd do but they should have asked you before they painted anything.

Here's how we painted the walls and perimeter of our tray ceiling in our bedroom:

My vote goes with all of Terriks suggestions.

Even though the white ceiling looks stark right now, once the furniture and floor is put in I bet it will be a nice and cheery room!

My vote would be to paint the darker color on all surfaces up to the highest ceiling.

i too would paint everything the wall color except the very highest flat part- it would look odd, to me, any other way...

If you find the juncture where crown moulding would go, everything above it is technically ceiling. We have 10 ft ceilings, all painted a "warm neutral" from Sherwin Williams called China Doll. The MBR and living room ceilings are vaulted. In the LR the lower flat part of the ceiling is China Doll, which is different and lighter than the green walls, and the vault is white. In the MBR the lower flat part and vault are all white. ID decided to do it this way because of the relative sizes of the rooms--- the LR is fairly large and he thought the light taupe would ground the room while still appearing lighter than the walls. Here are both rooms:ÃÂ
Living Room

Bedroom

Sorry, I forgot to add that, looking at my own ceilings, I would think that painting the lower flat part of the ceiling would visually lower it. I don't know that it matters if you paint that part the same color of the vault or not, as long as it is lighter than the walls.

If you look at the second pic, the lower flat ceiling part carries into other parts of the house where she may want to have a white ceiling. Not really sure what I would do. If you paint all upper areas white then the fireplace wall is going to look very short, even though you have high ceilings.

You may want to paint what is considered ceiling - just a few shades lighter than the walls. It will take away the stark look

I�m in agreement that everything except the top ceiling should be in the tan color. BTW, is that color Tobacco Road? It looks like it. Then I would have the painters mix some of the tan color into that stark white ceiling color to tone it down a little. It will be a pretty room, once it�s all finished!!

Not sure if someone already suggested this, but I think the flat top part of ceiling should remain white. The part that they painted that you are questionig, could all four sides of it be painted, but not the flat bottom parts. As ctlane pointed out those flatter areas seem to run into other areas of the house where it may look funny.

I think you have to go all one way or the other. So, everything from lower ceiling parts up should be white, or the wall color. To me it looks strange to have one vertical wall be white and one be the wall color.

I do think it would look good to treat the very top flat part as "the ceiling" and make that white, with everything else the wall color.

Do any of you with white ceilings have textured walls/ceilings? My current house in Texas has several rooms each with a different type of ceiling. However every ceiling (except the one in the kitchen) has the wall and ceiling the same color. In my last house (Maryland) we had smooth walls/ceilings and every ceiling was painted white.

Land sakes alive! I was hoping that one person would answer and then it'd be a chorus of "Yep" and "I agree" after that so that there would be an easy answer for us! Thank you all so much for your thoughts! I'm more confused than ever and that's saying a lot :).

On Tuesday we met the painter at the house and went over all of the colors. In our "written" list of colors that we'd provided to the builder (weeks ago), we indicated that all ceilings and closets should be "vanilla milkshake", a Porter Paints color. All was agreed and the last thing we did was give all of our phone numbers to the painter so he could call if he had any questions or concerns. DH stopped at the house on Wednesday afternoon and took the photos. He was surprised by the ceiling but after deciding I must have asked for it, decided he liked it a lot. I'm ok with the fireplace end, but not the kitchen end and I think it should be all or nothing. I'll see it in person tomorrow and will let you know....I'm sure we only have a short time to get it fixed. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and ideas!

Nanny2a - the lighter color is Porter Paints' True Blond, a copy of SW Blonde. The darker color on the kitchen walls is Porter's Antelope.