Why do you want to bring the ceiling down?

More intimate space.

My master is 13 x 16' and my ceilings are 10'. The room feels intimate.

Instead of lowering the ceilings in the bedroom, I lowered them in the hallways.

Why would door height need to be changed? How tall are your doors?

I missed that about door heights. My hallways are 9' tall and the rooms are 10'. All doors are 8' tall. Why would you have to change your door height?

You are probably right - 9 foot ceilings and 8 foot doors look pretty reasonable. I just am used to 6'8 doors with 9 foot ceilings. I was considering the hallways also.

I really think anything higher than 9' needs the taller 8' door. I would keep the ceilings at 10' per your plan. I really like 8' doors. You can always paint the ceiling or walls a darker color to create a more intimate effect.

What I think you are seeing less of are the master suites with the vaulted ceilings and trey ceilings.

"...Are people reducing ceiling height (10 to 9) in first floor masters?..."

No, not necessarily.

I have never lived in a home that had anything other than 8 ft. ceilings. There is absolutely no drawback that I can determine. We now have a second home that has ridiculously high ceilings. Why?? It is just a " look", I guess. The Windows and doors are no different than the ones in our permanent home. When I am at the second home I wonder what will happen when a lightbulb burns out in one of the ceiling fixtures! I do not have a tall enough ladder, and at my age I try to stay off of tall ladders.

I also think of the heat that is flowing up to the ceilings. I would never opt to have high ceilings......I guess you can tell!

There are many positive reasons for having higher ceilings, particularly in hot and humid climate zones. Back in the day, before Mr. Carrier ruined our lives by inventing air conditioning, many houses built in warm and hot temperature zones had high ceilings, often much higher than 9'-10'.

grapefruit - and I would never live in a 8 ft ceiling house by choice. Our windows are 6 feet tall which is taller than most houses with 8 foot ceilings. In the South, we don't really worry about the heat...

But I do agree about ridiculously high ceilings...

Yes 8 foot doors throughout downstairs. Somehow I was thinking that going to 9 feet for a section would be an issue but it isn't. Maybe I'll just do the hallways and maybe powder room. I just dislike the proportions of a small room with tall ceilings. Our 2nd home has 10 ft downstairs with a bedroom and I don't like it. It is a small bedroom - 13x13 or so. The smaller bath also seems silly with the taller ceilings but at least there is more room for the humidity to spread out in....

Our current master has 9 ft ceilings but tray goes down to 8. Not doing a tray this time.

I beg to differ about Mr. Carrier....

You can use picture molding and the area above it the same color as the ceiling to visually bring down the ceilings. A lot less effort involved.

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Cpartist- "Instead of lowering the ceilings in the bedroom, I lowered them in the hallways."

What made you choose to lower in hall?

Gthigpen, lowering a ceiling is actually almost zero effort and cost. But I like what you have shown. I live in area with crown everywhere which changes that look a bit.

Jln333, We have 10ft ceilings in living, dining and foyer. 9ft ceilings in the rest of the house. Bedrooms have tray ceilings.

We had 10 feet ceilings in upstairs bedrooms, and 9 feet in kitchen and family room. I never noticed the difference, until when preparing for sale I noticed our curtain rods somehow look a bit better in the family room..:)

at 8 feet you start feeling a difference. really high ceiling-you obviously feel a difference

both 9' and 10' feel very similar to me..just right..

maybe also because the standard ceilings were a tad higher where we lived before..and older ceilings were even higher..so I'm used to that

cathedral ceilings, which we also had-no, wasn't used to them..it was, like, wow. But it was a nice layout so while some places felt very high, some felt much more intimate. Also of course has its drawbacks..heat coming up and all that. In summers too hot, in winters too cold..well then it's Southern CA so the weather is paradise..it's just that one gets real spoiled real soon..:)

all our guests from abroad were in awe though since it was something different to them.

my MIL still sighs over that townhouse and goes on and on on how awesome it was..to her, felt out of this world beautiful

(pretty irritating since we moved only because of her lol)

now we have 8' feet in the rooms(except for living and entry)..well plenty of skylights and my playing with paint help with the perception of height. but to her, again, it's a bit low, because she's not used to it. and it's not special.

that was all to say, really briefly lol..10' to 9', you won't probably feel any major difference..unless you're very sensitive to that kind of thing

Go figure. I just bought a house with 12' ceilings both downstairs and upstairs. It's an outlier, I know. Fortunately, I already owned a really tall step ladder. The place where I would lower ceilings would be baths and closets.

homechef, here in FL almost all new higher end builds are a minimum of 12 ceilings.

My builder assumed when we started that I wanted 12' ceilings. I told him no way. That was 2' too tall for me.

We visited a house with 10' ceilings on the main floor (and they might have been higher in the kitchen/dining/great room) and 14' ceilings in the basement.

It didn't leave me wanting 10' ceilings. I thought the bedrooms and bathrooms looked smaller than they were because the ceilings were so high. The living spaces didn't feel 'home like' as much as 'commercial'.

Our intent is to go with 9' ceilings, possibly with some interest in the master and the great room area.

Miss Beth, I felt the same way in bedrooms/baths with 10' or 12' ceilings... that the room just seemed smaller. (I initially attributed it to the room being empty, though, lol.)

My kids' rooms will be 9' -- the height is awesome for bunk beds, but I want to use paint strategically, to bring the room down a bit, hoping it'll "stretch" the horizontal feeling of the room instead of emphasizing the vertical.

Our archtect loves playing with ceiling heights. The master actually has the outer part of the ceiling lowered with a raised tray over where the bed is going. There's also a lowered section over the dining table (in what is otherwise an open concept kitchen/dining/living room. I few times I said, enough is enough, and told them to raise it back up.