If you've never been in a room that was badly proportioned due to too-high ceilings, you may not really believe there is such a thing. But there is, and it feels awful. Just very wrong -- but hard to put your finger on why. As a general rule, 9' is safe and comfortable for just about any room size. Higher ceilings can be are nice in large rooms; and 8' ceilings are wonderful for cozier spaces. One trick we've learned in this house is that a small area with lower ceilings at the entry to a larger space really 'opens up' the room with 8' ceilings. Our downstairs hallway has 7'6" ceilings, which we thought was a problem until we lived there a while. But now the 8' ceilings in the kitchen and den at either end feel much nicer, and the 'transition spaces' really function as transitions.

Well it is often a preference thing but 99% of people probably prefer 9 foot ceilings at least in the open areas. I am a bit of a real estate junky and I also rent vacation homes - many of which are old and have 8 foot ceilings. I am 6'1" so that jades me a bit. We have 11 ft in great room/kitchen, 10 in other downstairs areas and 9 for bedrooms. It is a large house so those proportions work. We have a vacation home with 8 foot bedrooms and that works well - and they are small rooms. That house has 10 ft open great room - and that works well. Higher ceilings allow a much better view and better sun light into a room. Even tall windows can't compensate. The larger the room with 8 foot ceilings, the darker it will be. Some people like dark but most don't. I personally like darker bedrooms so the 8 ft ceilings can work there. We were just at a rental house with 8 foot ceilings in a large room and we couldn't get over how dark it was. Lights on during the day is just a shame. You mention heating. You have a design with a very deep overhang on the south side of the house. That decision will cost far more in heating than an extra foot in wall height. An extra foot in wall height means an extra 12% in wall losses. In my house wall losses are about 20% of heating losses so the extra foot is roughly 2% extra heating. A good southern wall of glass can easily save 50% on heating costs. You have a design of a dark house with that overhang also. You only allow northern light into the open area. Northern windows only hurt in regards to heating. They also give the least sunlight into the house. Add in 8 foot ceilings and it is going to be dark. And for some more completely unsolicited advice - 30 inch deep counters make overhead space harder to reach. And windows at 1 foot above the floor have to be tempered by code and that is roughly double the cost. Code (everywhere?) requires that windows need to be 18 inch above the floor or they must be tempered. Building on a slab yet you are concerned about heating? I am wondering where you are building. Generally, slabs are used in the South where heat is in excess. Where I live in mixed climate, slabs are used in the most basic of construction - typically townhomes. In a colder area, locating ductwork for HVAC is harder to do with a slab. You can do it of course but it is harder. I could ramble on and on about this but that is a different topic.

Thanks for all the postings! It's comforting to hear it's been done before and it doesn't look odd. It's unnerving building a home when you have no idea what the final product is actually going to look like...you think you do from the drawings, but then there's little things here and there you don't catch until it's actually being built. So far, we've been able to change all the minor details that didn't pan out like we thought from the blueprints, but the ceiling height was a huge unknown since that's one aspect that's really difficult to capture on paper. They put up the trusses this morning and we walked around again upstairs and it actually felt a little taller than when there was no ceilings up, if that's possible :-) We do have a tray ceiling in the master, so it is a little taller in that room which is nice since it's the biggest room upstairs. I also found out my cousin's home which I've always loved has 10' down and 8' up and I didn't even notice the height difference - clearly it's not the big deal I was worried it might be. houseofsticks - If you are considering 10' down and 8' up, I would say from the comments here as well as now finding out that I've been through a home with that arrangement that it would be a good way to get your taller ceilings downstairs without adding the cost of bumping up the upstairs where it's mainly bedrooms.

I have a first floor guest room that is not quite 9x12. It holds two twin beds, with a dressing table between them, under a window, that doubles as night stands with lights for the beds. There is also a tall chest on one wall, and a very small victorian rocker at the foot of one of the beds (must be moved in order to open one of the two closets in this room. It's just fine as a guest room, but would be very small if two children were sharing it. It would work fine for one child with only 1 twin bed. There are two window in this room, One could put a double bed in with one side against the wall, but it would be tight. Yes, these things are very relative in regard to location of the house. When I watch Escape to the Country on YouTube, I'm always astounded when the potential buyers look at a room that barely holds a double bed, with the ceiling sloping on both sides, and immediately declare that it is a "nice sized room"! We're spoilt in the US and expect most rooms to hold a queen or king size bed with plenty of room on both sides for tables, and no ducking for ceiling slopes!