Ick....hate texture. :-) But, that's just me. Some people like it. My last two houses had popcorn and knock-down. I am delighted to be living in the land of smooth ceilings now!

I would absolutely pay the upcharge, BUT, make sure your guy knows what he's doing, that he does this enough to get it right. Go take a look at some smooth ceilings done by the people who are going to do yours.

IMO smooth is worth the upcharge. People in big houses are probably doing it because its cheaper and they don't want to pay the upcharge.

Knockdown or texture is appropriate for some styles of architecture, but for the most part you can't go wrong with smooth if it is done correctly.

I like the contrast between smooth walls and knockdown textured ceilings. I have knockdown in every room.

Go smooth.

Another vote for smooth. It takes more skill to do, so an up-charge is fair. I'll take an imperfect smooth ceiling over a textured one any day. Texture is hard to clean, hard to paint and darned near impossible to match if you ever have ceiling damage.

Another vote for smooth. Make your walls and your decor stand out, not the ceiling. Plus if you want to remove the texture it is a mess. JMHO :-)

I grew up in a 50's ranch house. We had textured ceilings BUT it wasn't that awful popcorn stuff it had a actual design done free hand by Italian workers. The center of the room had a circle and from that there were arches and swirls made. It was beautiful.
The walls had a similar treatment on them that made it look like they had cascading waterfalls.
Today's contractors do the awful popcorn textured ceilings because it hides a multitude of sins and is cheaper to do than the smooth. I'd insist on the smooth if I was building today especially if you are like me and like a bit of color on your ceilings. That popcorn stuff is impossible to paint and it's a PITA to fix after the fact.

Wow! That was fast! Thanks for all of the replies. Let's see....that's 6 smooth and 1 textured. I realized that this is a very personal taste, but still.....I appreciate your feedback.

I also HATE popcorn, but the installer told me knockdown is very popular. Maybe, but it's so hard to translate what it would look like from the sample board he made for me.

I know my husband has had a devil of a time patching our textured ceilings over the years, and I thought it might also be hard to patch a smooth ceiling because it's so plain that anything imperfection would cry out at you. But from what some of you are saying, that's not the case?

Thanks folks. I'll see what the final vote ends up being. :-) Oh....and I also wondered what you would paint your ceilings with. We've always been pretty traditional....we like white ceilings. We've always used a flat just so that I don't have to sand or prep to re-coat them. I assume a ceiling flat would be appropriate. Am I right?

Knockdown is "very popular" :)

In other words - "It is a lot easier for me to do knockdown. I have never done a smooth ceiling. I dont know how to do it but I will try to sell you a cover up job"

I just wanted to chime in...we scraped the popcorn in our 2100 sq ft 1970s ranch home ourselves. Also 8 ft tall ceilings. My husband was adamant he wanted smooth ceilings. That is what he prefers. I actually like knockdown...but the BIG knockdown...you know what I mean? Not the little blobs, the big blobs. LOL, hope that made sense.

I especially liked knockdown for our home because it is that "faux spanish" look. To me, it just suits the house.

Well, after scraping all the popcorn, we saw that we had AWFUL waves in the ceiling. My DH was so disappointed, but I was happy. I know if he was given the option of paying $350 for smooth ceilings, he would have done it. we did not even research it, because he said it was expensive.

Sooo, we had the knockdown done, and he agrees it looks great.

Good luck!

haha....yeah, in some cases that would be true, I'm sure. But this guy actually told me that he would do the smooth, but it would cost an extra $350. The ceilings would need a lot of work to get them smooth because they are sagging. Someone originally installed the wallboard with nails instead of screws, so they have to go through the house and screw the wallboard into the studs, which makes all the nails pop out of course. So it's going to take some time to get it smooth. They did say it would be easier and cost less to texture the ceiling, but they'd be happy to do the smooth if we'd like. They're being very accommodating. They're pretty good guys actually, and my husband (who knows drywalling) says they're doing an excellent job.

My question was simply which would look better. I think spending the extra $350 is probably worth it to get the smooth look.

If knockdown was so popular why are people going through the work and mess of scrapping or putting up new sheetrock? I would get what you want.

I'm going to chime in here for the textured ceilings! My current house has stippled ceilings and I was thrilled. Smooth ceilings always looked like I was living in a box. Stipple hides a world of imperfections, and the stipple diffuses ceiling lighting nicely giving an illusion of greater ceiling height.

I suggest you ask the contractor to show you a stippled ceiling in a real house so you can see it in real size.

Smooth ceilings will show any/all imperfections. Any wave will cast a shadow on a smooth ceiling, sometimes it can look like you have cobwebs when you don't. Do you have natural light shining on your ceilings (from skylights or cathedral windows)? I do prefer smooth if it's done properly. $350 sounds like a bargain of an upcahrge for 1800 SF.

Smooth ceilings will show any/all imperfections.

That's the truth! We went from popcorn to smooth on our 8' ceilings, but they're far from perfect.

"I grew up in a 50's ranch house. We had textured ceilings BUT it wasn't that awful popcorn stuff it had a actual design done free hand by Italian workers. The center of the room had a circle and from that there were arches and swirls made. It was beautiful. "

That is my experience too!

I have those same ceilings in my 1966 house.
NOT popcorn and very beautiful!

We have 8' ceilings in our 1960's ranch, and I would go with smooth. I had texture/stucco in my old townhouse, and it was a huge pain in the behind to paint. At least it wasn't popcorn, though. I do like that better than knockdown.

The only other thing I do like is the "Italian" swirl style carol_in_ny mentioned. That would also be in character of the home.

The extra $$$ we spent on smooth walls and ceiling in our master suite gives me pleasure every single day. Conversely, I'm itching something fierce to get the rest of the popcorn off the ceilings in the rest of the house. I HATE popcorn. LOVE smooth. No matter what style, it always looks better, IMO. Money WELL spent.

My grandparents had a 50s bungalow. The living room ceiling had beautiful, swirly knock down (not popcorn) in white, but the edges had a wide, smooth border. It was the nicest element of their otherwise very modest home.

Smooth all the way. You can always add texture down the line, but it is a PITA to remove.
I'd only do a texture in a Spanish or rustic style home.

As far as paint. When I was growing up we always had white ceilings. That was the norm for the 50's /60's.
Today I always do a color on the ceilings. Be it the lightest shade of the wall color I can find or something that will stand out BUT there is color on that 5th wall. It just ties things together.
The sheen is very dependent upon your individual taste and the function of the room.

I guess we're willing to accept that we may have imperfections in the smooth ceiling. But like many of you have said, we can always start with smooth, and if down the road we find the lighting shows the imperfections too much, we can texture the ceiling at that time.

I couldn't find the Italian swirl texture that gsciencechick mentioned. But I found other swirls that were a bit too 'swirly' for my taste.

Thanks to all of you for your feedback. My husband and I have decided that we're going to go with smooth. We may try Carol_from_ny's idea and paint the ceiling a very light shade of the same color we put on the walls. We'll try the idea in one room like a bedroom to see if we like it. If not, then with it being a smooth ceiling, my 6'4" husband can easily paint back over the ceiling with white.

My 50's bungalow has the original swirled ceiling in the livingroom. I personally like it.

Prairiedawnpam...were they like these?

Pam

Pam, my 50s cottage has textured wall and coffered ceilings as you show. Texture isn't quite as large and a different pattern. The pattern on my walls allow me to patch easily, I use a hair comb to create the texture in spackle.

I'm with Pharou....good chance popcorn is to hide what you already know needs to be taken care of. I wouldn't do it. And would make sure all was done correctly for the extra.

Smooth! The other always looks dirty.

Well when we scraped the popcorn (which had been added in the 80s) off of the ceiling in the living room of our 1955 rambler we found a really nice swirl texture similar to the picture pammysue posted above. It was not difficult to paint and it never looks dirty. In contrast, the ceiling in our bathroom is smooth and it looks sad and unfinished to me.

Another vote for texture/knockdown for me. I agree that it softens the feel of the room making it feel less boxy.

Well, the drywall is finished as of today, and we had them do a smooth ceiling. We think we like it, but the real test will come after we've painted it and look at it in different lighting. Thanks to all of you for your help. We figure we can always go back and texture it later if we want to. But I've never had smooth ceilings, and so I think I'd like to live with them for a while first.

Take a look at this webpage. What I'm talking about (and probably carol_in_ny) is the one they call mud swirl.

Here is a link that might be useful: ceiling textures