An architect once told us that when doing an addition, you want to keep it in line with the rest of the house. We were thinking about an addition with higher ceilings than the rest of the house (8ft) and he said that it would make it look like an addition. People would come in and say "what a nice addition". Keeping the ceiling height the same would help the addition look like part of the house and hopefully people would say "what a nice house" instead of "what a nice addition."

As an appraiser, I saw many badly done additions, so often very large, high ceilinged family rooms tacked onto the backs of small ranches. One walked through small, low-ceilinged front rooms and, far more often than not, a small kitchen to get to them. In spite of those prime examples of what not to do, IMO it's fine for an addition to look like what it is--as long as it's done well so that it looks and feels right. That can mean matching architecturally or complementing so that both eras end up benefiting from the juxtaposition.

As for "formal" ceilings being traditionally higher, another, more accurate, way to look at it is that the main rooms had higher ceilings. These days "main" certainly means the family room and any area allied with it. I'm totally serious about this. It would be very inappropriate to grace a relatively seldom used room with a ceiling that felt particularly nice, slighting the room the family spent 95% of its awake time in.

And, yes, I would, at the same time trying to figure out how to use this to make the original rooms even more appealing for their current roles.

When we redid our space, the kitchen and family room had 8' ceilings. However, we had sloped elevated ceilings in the LR and DR in our post and beam house and when the ceilings were taken down in the family room to get rid of the popcorn we noticed that the supports in the attic would allow us to do the same thing in the family area as well as add a beam. My point is, the change fit with the rest of the house and the style of the house.

If you can somehow tie the change into the rest of the house then perhaps consider it.. If your house is more formal what about considering a tray-ceiling, or if the space is open what about sloping the ceiling from 8' to 9' over the width (or Length). It might also depend on the size of the room that you are considering in relation to the sizes of the other public rooms.

Personally, I wouldn't care. I would go ahead and make the ceilings taller, especially if it made the area seem larger and more open. Probably wouldn't do it for guest quarters.

Thanks for the input, y'all.

I don't think it's that unusual for ranches (in CA at least) to have had different ceilings in the family rooms (think paneled with exposed beams! Don't think I'm too smart to consider that!) but I don't think they are necessarily higher ceilings. You'd get the big vaulted ceilings in the central room, but the family rooms were sort of dark holes.

But it does seem like the place where we live and make our messes ought to be nice and the spouse (who is a foot taller than me) likes the taller stuff.

I think a sloped ceiling could actually look consistent, BLF. The back porch ceiling which is prominent from inside slopes at a nice angle. Old not very good photo that sort of shows porch ceiling which I like (shop light has been removed, paint has been changed, etc. but it's still a fixer-upper--might even replace window some day!):

A tray ceiling though wouldn't work. Too formal for the house. It's ranchy. Fifties ranchy and I won't be changing that. When I say "formal rooms" I just mean the nicer sitting room where you can have company over or the dining room where you eat when you have guests. But they aren't FORMAL formal. But just because it's a casual house doesn't mean people should be able to see into the kitchen from the front room.

We definitely plan on keeping the original rooms functional. The living and dining rooms are nice rooms and they will be even nicer when the kitchen is put behind closed doors where it belongs (PO removed all the walls. Horrible.).

And a dining room as a dining room when we have a smaller table in the kitchen is always a well-used room in our home, even if it's not used for eating very often!

It would be nice to do it for the guest room since a frequent guest is very tall and doesn't like the 8 ft. ceilings, but I'm planning on putting in a whole bathroom for him so I doubt he'd complain! (Never know with inlaws though! :P)

This may not be possible, but what first came to my mind is sinking the addition. That is, have steps down into it. That why the ceilings can be high but still not appear to be on the outside?
Well, maybe it's a silly idea actually. I think split level homes usually have a family room built this way right?

Yes yes yes! It's made all the difference in our Ranch which our architect is slowly helping us turn into a Cape :)

Especially if any of the windows face East or West... you get wonderful morning/afternoon light. The feeling of the moonlight streaming in at night through our windows/skylight will always thrill me. Good luck!

I think if you could post a floorplan, someone would be sure to come up with the best way to make it work

The addition could be sunk to ground level. Totally period appropriate! I have such clumsy family members though. Dare I?

Yeah, I could post a floorplan, but wouldn't that be cheating? :P

This is the existing house. My architect has some good ideas for the old kitchen so it will be a small but not awkwardly shaped office/closets, moving the door to the living room (between stove and fireplace, both of which are leaving).

I am way ahead of myself talking about ceiling height here, obviously. We've had some very preliminary drawings from the architect and we picked out the bits we liked out of each.

We're thinking of perhaps leaving the (existing) living and dining room spaces sort of open to each other (currently kitchen, dining, and living rooms are totally open except for the huge fireplace) and closeable openings to the new stuff. How the new area is accessed will depend on if I can bear to lose the other fireplace which I love but have to admit it's in a stupid spot, and was even in the 1950s.

So the new bit will go in the gap between house and garage and spill behind the garage some (the garage will also be lengthened). The lot is odd-shaped and the addition will all be off to the side--should barely be noticeable from the original part of the house (or the street). We also have height restrictions so everything will stay nice and low.

Windows are important--this space will face pretty much south (which is actually a problem for furniture and crayons left near the dining room windows). A small guest room and bath would probably end up behind the garage.

The bedroom end of the house might get some attention at a future date if we ever start thinking about resale, but it's perfectly fine for us right now. I like the pink bathroom.

Have always loved your new house, Fori and there's nothing dinky about it. it's a terrific house.

IMO, a higher ceiling will add a slight bit of grandeur, not necessarily formality. After all, you are talking about nine feet, not 12feet. t will add to a spacious feel. And certainly it can be done without compromising the integrity of the house. Mcm can be grand, in tune with nature!

I have a 1917 Colonial and we have 9 ft ceilings in our kitchen and took the cabinets to the ceiling with filler between the top and the cabinet crown. I love how they turned out - it just lifts everything and finishes it off, plus no pesky cleaning up top! I'm not a knick knack girl, nor do I have a collection of anything to display that I'd want to sit above my kitchen cabinets ...forever.

I say go for the 9' ceilings! Here's a big of the cabinets to the ceiling. Our cabinets were Fieldstone - and you just ordered a small piece of trim that hides the seam between the cabinet and filler, then filler boards of whatever size you need,) and then you put crown molding up top. Our cabinets were glazed so we got the crown through the cabinet company but it's also perfectly fine to use your own crown (unless it's a terrible clash with the color of the cabinet.)

We took the cabinets up all the way for the kitchen and butler's pantry - pics below!

Good luck!

P.S. The light was hung too high over the island - getting fixed so ignore that! :-)

P.S. 2 The lens sort of curved this image center - it's a straight set of two cabinets. :)

We did an addition onto our 300 year old house. We did raise our ceiling heights in the new addition. I wanted to also rip off the ceiling in the kitchen and raise it, unfortunately we were building on top of the kitchen and we were not able to, so I am stuck with a 6'9" kitchen ceiling.

Our house is already a mishmash of ceiling heights in the original old part of the house, so it kind of works anyway. They run from just under 6' in a bedroom upstairs (yes I hope my son does not grow very tall) to just under 8' in my main dining room. We went all the way to a 10' ceiling in the master bedroom upstairs. The outside of the house looks seamless, and it is a bit odd to walk into the master bedroom to see such a high ceiling when all others are under 8 1/2', however 1- we did it where it looks like you ripped out an attic space to make it happen, and 2- hubby and I decided sometimes you need to just do what makes you happy and comfortable. You have to live in the house. With all our low ceilings, our "super tall" 8' ceiling in the dining room was the most inviting room in the house at that point, we wanted a few more rooms that had higher ceilings also. I don't think a foot will make that big of a difference aesthetically, but living in a house with so many different ceiling heights, I can tell you it makes a huge difference in the feel of a room.

Can you put an outline of the Shapes of the new work on the drawing? The interrelationships will be what tells whether it would work well or not.

I think 9-foot ceilings will be fine. However, I would not do "steps down". It limits what can be done later b/c of the different floor heights and will make it difficult to "age in place"...it would not be arthritis/cane/walker/wheelchair friendly.

Even if you do not plan to be in this home forever, I would not do the steps...it might hurt resale down the road. (They're also an issue with infants and young toddlers.)

Thanks all. I'm currently fighting with my technology stuff to get an image of proposed spaces. There's a phone, a new computer lacking software, and a dead camera battery involved ...

Buehl, you're right about the step. I plan on having all the new stuff ADA friendly in case we do end up with permanent elderly residents and a step would sort of make that pointless.

Westsider, you're so nice. :) My house, of course, isn't MCM. It's just MC. I don't think we can get away with too much modern flair! More "early American" than "atomic".

I did have a 9 foot kitchen once and had cabinets to the ceiling. Didn't look as nice as Akcorcoran's but not many do. (Like!!!) I don't know what the spouse kept up there, but I didn't care. A ceiling under 8' is getting too close to my head, though. I guess that's the price of living in a classic home, Kali. But when a house has been around that long it's almost expected to have character from additions and reworkings.

This image is terrible. Let us pretend that the dining and living rooms remain pretty much the same (with repairs and perhaps some short "wing" walls between them to separate a bit.

The green line is the wall between new stuff and old--just how that will work depends on everything else. But I do want to have a real actual separation here, with doors and stuff. Or at least any permanently opened opening would be towards the rear.

The mudroom in the original I think I would like to keep as is (but stick laundry in there--it'll fit fine). So doorways from there would go into the ex-kitchen, garage, and new kitchen.

Behind the garage and between garage and house is the new kitchen, family room, bathroom, and small guest room. We're thinking of a more open concept here (hence the erased kitchen), with kitchen open to FR and spare room/bathroom tacked onto the back. (I'm sure our architect can make that work better than depicted here, with an actual roof and walls and better layout.)

I'm confident we can work out minor details (like laundry flow) once we get a general idea nailed down...

But this concept appeals to us because it puts the noisy activities away from the bedrooms. And since there will be a separation between the old and new, it might not matter about a ceiling difference. The new roof is going to be in a new plane anyway so I'm not worried about it lining up on the outside.

I realize this isn't going to be quite as nicely laid out as a new house built from scratch, or if I gutted it and started over, or if I just moved...

And if it makes a difference, this house is oriented so that the "good bits" are in the back. It's based on that postwar mentality that the backyard is part of the living space and the front is where the car goes.

In our rancher redux, we kept the LR and DR at the same approximate ceiling height, but added a tray ceiling to the LR and a skylight to the DR.

Here is what it looked like when we bought it:

Here is how we remodeled it:

We did bump up substantially the FR and Breakfast/family room ceilings (I know you aren't particularly thinking of doing anything so tall). These two rooms actually share the long wall--one room on each side of the wall. No one seemed to think it was odd that this room had such a disparate ceiling height. In fact, most people commented that it was nice to come in and have a surprise after walking through the front of the house:

I think adding some height if you can, will make it feel less enclosed and I think you will like the extra height. Even a small bit of ceiling height helps the ranchers!

Old entry to FR:

New entry to FR:

We kept 95% of the original footprint, just tore down walls, peeled off wood siding, tiled over the fireplaces....ranchers are awesome. I love them. I think your idea to put in the kitchen where the scribble is will work fine and you can definitely lift that ceiling without it looking funny. I've seen it done in CA over and over again. Thoughtfully planned, it will make your rancher beautiful and functional for another 50 years :)

Firsthouse -- I LOVE what you've done! Fantastic! As to the OP, I would say YES! You're trying to change/improve the "old" house, so go for the higher ceilings, just being careful to make sure they fit and transition appropriately.

Our rancher has 8 ft ceilings and then a vaulted living room and it has never looked funny to me. Most people comment on how much they love the room and the ceiling.

We are getting ready to change the front of our house (all but hallway and bedrooms) and will be raising the ceilings in all the new rooms. We are looking at adding skylights to the hallway that will remain 8 ft as a way to open it up and help with that transition. I think as long as the rest of the house is a similar style it will look fine and you will love the higher ceilings.

I think you could probably carry the extra height in the new part of the house if it is done carefully. I think 9 would be too tall for the new bathroom.

Firsthouse - I absolutely LOVE your house. I am not a modern person, if you saw our house you would completely understand. But I think you did a fantastic job. Your house is very inviting. You did a great job of opening up the space.

Fori- you are right. Houses as old as ours are expected to have character and we can easily get away with ceiling heights all over the place. However, how do you think the character of an old house comes to be. It comes from each owner's reworking and personal mark. Our house has been in hubby's family for 100 years, we just met the family of the previous owner who owned the house for 120 years before that. It is nice to know who did what to add that "character" (not that I haven't had some choice words for past family members while remodeling)

But my point is, make your own mark for your own reasons. Make it look nice, but be comfortable and happy in your own house.

I've seen an addition that made the kitchen and family room add-on look like it had been a conservatory ... lots of windows and higher ceilings than the older section.

I think with the size of space you are adding and the rooms in it you can easily go with higher ceilings. For me personally, I wouldn't do an automatic bump-up to 9' ceilings but rather vaulted like firsthouse did or sloped from inside wall to the outside wall along the whole length of the room.

There is probably some design formula that gives you parameters for deciding the max height you go to depending on the length and width of the rooms.

I'm excited to hear what you decide to do. I love vaulted/sloped ceilings. I would find it tough to live in a house with 8' ceilings after living in our higher ceilings. But, I know that they are not for everyone.

Thanks all! I appreciate the input and shall attempt to not do anything too weird (besides the garage. HA! I want that.).