Actually higher ceilings are better in warm climates since heat rises. However, what is a modern farmhouse?

With a properly designed HVAC system, no problem. @cpartist said it correctly. The main question is, would be higher ceiling be in keeping with an overall design objective? Need more info to assess that question. Everyone has a different meaning to the phrase "modern farmhouse"? Does that mean Joanna Gaines look? From your ideabooks, you saved photos of more soft contemporary/minimalistic looks. Do you have a good bead on the actual style you want? Get really clear on that first.

Cooling bills are secondary, ceiling height needs to fit into your architecture and asthetics, if it has an exterior facing wall with really tall doors, windows and a great view, (I love glass). I feel tall ceilings can look really nice or not so nice, depending on architecture.

In the old days when we lived just north of the tropics, 22' or even taller ceilings was the norm; there was no A/C, just fans and vents/windows close to the ceiling. It is my perception fewer homes are being built with tall great room ceilings.

We have 20' ceilings in our current house and we hate it. The room is hot in the summer(AR). The sun is always shining on the TV. It might look wow in photos, but I would never do it again.

Why don't you post plans and elevations or perspectives so we can get a better idea than simply mathematics.

That said, 18-feet is tall. Will the interior ceiling be flat or pitched with the ridge at 18-feet?

Depends on the room size.

I have a tall, peaked ceiling in the living room: the two opposing walls at the perimeter are about 10' high and the roof slopes up to the peak in the center, which is about 18' high. The room is about 20' X 20' and the scale seems appropriate. I like how it looks.

On the downside, however, there are also several recessed halogen lights high up in the ceiling and the required smoke detector near the peak. Can you imagine how much fun it is to haul in and erect a ladder high enough to change a bulb or replace the battery in the smoke alarm that starts beeping at 3am? Just a thought for the OP....

Is there an architect involved in this project?

Thanks for all your comments and I welcome everyone to add their thoughts. Our plans are not finalized yet. The interior floor plan is close to being done and we are trying to determine elevations. We will have clerestory windows on 2 opposing walls in this 18' tall space. One wall will have a 10' disappearing wall that wraps around the corner. The great room will be 26' wide x 32' approximately. The space is oriented northwest-southeast. We do have an architect working on the plans and he recently sent us some dimensional drawings that look really odd at this point. I'll try to attach some drawings later.

"The space is oriented Northwest-Southeast"

Ok - so we get the axis but where are the windows? The primary variable is the orientation of the larger windows. Volume matters in a truly hot climate like Arizona but window orientation still matters more. The primary issue with volume is that there is a larger surface area to block heat out from but that is relatively minor.

So I checked and I am shocked that it is colder there than we are at this very instant - 43 degrees. But either way, your average high in July is 109. Using a typical cooling setpoint of 75, that is a 34 degree difference. Not terribly large, not so different than the heating one right now.

From a cost standpoint, you could perhaps spend $1000 and foam sheath the great room and bring the volume/wall heat gain down to the equivalent 10 ft ceiling. You would not usually just foam sheath a single room but I am just trying to give an example of cost. That foam would last nearly forever.

So - the primary driver is windows and orientation of windows. A west window creates probably 5 times the heat gain of a North window (this is climate dependent based on sun and temp since the window has poor r value).

The height of course does allow heat to rise and has some advantage in a cooling dominated climate.

That all being said, I have had 18 foot ceilings and would not do again. Design - difficult. Window coverings - difficult. Sound - terrible (may not be an issue for you based on design). Feeling in room - not terrible but not great. Your room is large and so the ceiling scale may be appropriate but I loved Cook's description of government buildings and churches. Spot on.

Okay, it's not a farmhouse, but here's how the proportions of a 17' ceiling works in Georgian design after some guy named Robert Adam :

When I was eight, my friends and me created a cosy hidden retreat in the corner of a crawl space using cast-off rugs, broken furniture and illuminated with a single bare bulb. Safe as the bugs in our rug! When I grew up, I craved something bigger.

As the neighbourhoods I've built in have gone more and more upscale since the '80s, so have ceiling heights. At C$6m+, no less than 11'-14' will suffice in the main first floor rooms.

Will you hire out weekly cleaning and things like window washing? Do you have custom window coverings and their regular maintenance (such as dry cleaning) in your budget?

If you love throwing money out the window for heating and cooloing go for it.No farmhouse I have ever seen would have those energy wasting ceilings not even modren ones.

That's what makes it "Modern", Bastardized Farmhouse just doesn't have the same ring.

I don't know about this throwing money out the window. Plenty of people build code minimum insulation. It is not that hard to double up on insulation and build twice as tall. Sure it costs money but so do all of the choices we make. Drycleaning window coverings? Am I supposed to do that? I have never done that. Not sure I have ever seen the need to do that but perhaps I am a slob.

Robert Adam knew and understood proportion better than most -- one might even suggest that what he knew then is more than what many who toil today do -- and of course heating and cooling was not much of a concern to him : ) .

And speaking of proportion, this is what Lansdowne looked like originally (before the dining room was sent off to NYC):

The "eating room" is at lower left,

Drycleaning window coverings? Am I supposed to do that? I have never done that. Not sure I have ever seen the need to do that but perhaps I am a slob.

David, if the windows in the room will be overscale as well, they'll need custom curtains or shades, and if curtains they'll likely have linings (especially against the Arizona sun, so that they don't fall apart in a few years). Aside from the fact that you can't successfully machine wash curtains with linings, you also can't successfully stuff that much curtain in a home machine. So if you want to clean your curtains every so often, drycleaning is pretty much the only route to go.

Oh, for the good ole days! Thanks for pulling those up. Love harkening back to those times where so much amazing design principles were formed and used to create places to enjoy for decades and decades. Today, we tend to design for 6-7 years! Europeans don't understand us at all! haha! Thanks!

In most homes today, we don't do "drapes" that are high, we decorate at 9' and below. If sun is an issue, we put remote controlled solar shades. So, no dry cleaning needed.

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Flo, that's why it's so much better to think about this sort of thing, and the various consequences and ramifications, early in the game.

Otherwise, you end up in the Home Decorating forum dealing with an unpleasant, awkward, and often expensive fait accompli.

Cooling bills are secondary,

Disagree. An efficient house is one of the considerations when designing a plan. You can have looks + function ... but without planning, things often don't come together.

I don't enjoy visiting a certain friend's house. It was very expensive and was built to impress, but one of the places where it falls flat is the two-story family room /formal dining room. The back of the house faces west, and she prefers no window treatments on the upper windows, so every afternoon the sun beats down, and it's like a sauna in that place. She put in a ceiling fan, but it doesn't begin to touch the problem.

It's a given a 26' wide x 32' room is going to cost a little more to heat/cool. I took that into consideration while designing our 56x23 great room with a wall of glass doors/windows where I brought down ceiling height from my original concept of 22' ceilings to a 12' ceiling.

David-

Just so you know, doubling up on the code minimum insulation does not result in huge energy savings. The most energy is saved with the first inch of insulation; additional inches (or higher R values) save less and less. That's not to say that one shouldn't go for a high level of insulation. However, if you look at this graph, you can see that going from an R-20 wall (about code standard) to an R-40 wall will only increase the reduction in heat flow by a couple of percent:

Even if one chooses remote-controlled shades above 9', one has to consider maintenance issues and add that to the work list (and determine whose work it will be -- the homeowners? a house cleaner?) and the budget. The same way, as I think Mrs. Pete and I agree, that one needs to consider the cooling (and/or heating) costs, which is best addressed in the earliest stages. In other words, before and not after construction.

And there are some who just don't like or want remote-controlled shades, maybe because they're not keeping with the modern farmhouse look, and would prefer a version of this,

I'm just saying that there are consequences and ramifications to these choices, from roof lines to window coverings.

I think that 18’ ceilings will work in a 26’x32’ room. A 9’ ceiling would look confining in such a large room.

My main bedroom and bathroom are connected with a sliding door/wall that if fully opened up creates a 30’x20’ room with 11’ ceilings. This already feels low to me.

“so every afternoon the sun beats down, and it's like a sauna in that place. ”

Which can be avoided using high end low E windows.

You are taking smart actions, using good insulation and low e-glass in windows, with the exposures you are mentioning, you should be fine. So, then it boils down to personal choice. I personally like the volume of higher ceilings. I love great chandeliers, which this height allows and I love a feeling of space. I have a combination of both in our current home and in next home I hope to have a bit higher ceilings. We range from 12' in fam room and open kitchen to 22' in entry and up stairway. 14' in downstairs library, and 10' in other downstairs rooms. 10' in second floor rooms. So, kind of up to what you want. If you want a tall fireplace wall for example, a taller ceiling is a beautiful look with a great chandelier. If not fireplace or focal wall per se, then lower ceiling might work fine. I think you are down to personal choice.

btw, largest percentage of heat and cooling loss is through windows.

I'm another fan of high ceilings - our new home will have 10' throughout and more like 20-22' in the great room. Our current house has even higher ceilings in the great room. That said, we're thinking very carefully about design to make sure it doesn't feel cold. We're looking at how to use texture, natural materials, color, light fixtures to keep it feeling cozy while also being airy and spacious. I like to think we got the balance right in our current house, as we love being in the high ceilinged great room, and I'm hoping we'll get it right again.

"Largest percentage of loss through windows" - I disagree with such a general statement.

Cooling loss is more accurately stated as heating gain and that is more than just semantics. The greatest percentage is usually solar gain and I agree that is usually through windows. Also a large factor is internal gain (lights, people, oven etc).

I just went back to my energy audit (pre build, last house) and it quoted $482 for walls and $186 for windows for annual heating costs. Those 2 parts of the house were basic products so in my case, walls costs almost 3 times as much as windows. We had 30 windows in 4000 sqft. So by my standards, it was well windowed - more than average.

Since I am throwing numbers around, our cooling was $193 for windows and $34 for walls. See how windows dominate? Our rear was East facing which had the bulk of large windows. A better designed house could have significantly reduced that window portion.

Kudzu - while what you are saying is true, the fact is that a 100 sqft wall (say 9 foot ceiling) with R-10 has the same heat flow as a 200 sqft wall (say 18 foot ceilings) with R-20. So doubling of insulation cuts the heat movement in 1/2. The graph becomes misleading on that point because it focuses on each R-2 increment - but if you look, a doubling of R = 1/2 heat loss.

OP - is your high ceiling connected to a 2nd floor? What is your lighting? Have you planned window treatments? Does it enhance a view? Have you lived in a house with 18 ft ceilings before? These are things to consider. When this has come up before, it seems to be the consensus view is that people who have lived with 18 ft ceilings would not do it again.

Let's face it, most build houses to impress (at least partly). How much that drives decision making varies. I can imagine that some architects design to impress - how much that drives design varies....

We recently stayed in a VRBO house in Scottsdale that had 18' ceilings in the great room and foyer. It worked for that space as far as being a pleasant space to look at but it was interesting that we didn't "hang out" in there. The stay was a family gathering so we had a lot of hanging out time. It wasn't inviting to sit in the great room so we gathered mostly in the kitchen at the table and around the island in spite of the fact that this was not a big eating crowd. The kitchen had a 12 ft. ceiling and was likely the size of the great room you are planning. The kitchen just seemed to be a cozier space even though the comfortable seating was in the adjacent great room. So cooling and heating aside, I'd also be concerned about how the room makes you feel.

For my eye, from your idea books (which I love btw) this one isn't cozy:

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But this one is cozy even though it has a high ceiling, just not as high as the other one. Both are similarly sparsely furnished and with concrete floors.

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Most of the photos in your idea books have ceilings that are less than 18'.

David-

You're simply incorrect in your interpretation. Yes, if you go from R-20 to R-40 you will have 1/2 the heat loss...but only of what's left to be saved, which isn't much since the R-20 has already saved most of it. Here's the correct interpretation of the chart, looking at heat flow at various insulation levels:

R-2: 53 MMBtu [high loss]

R-20: 5 MMBtu [loss reduced by about 91%]

R-40: 2.5 MMBtu [loss reduced by about 95%]

That means if you go from essentially no insulation (R-2), to R-20, you save a huge 48 MMBtu; but doubling the amount of insulation to R-40 only takes you a bit more: 50.5 MMBtu, or about a 4-5% increase in savings for twice as much insulation. If you're not convinced, take a look at this: The Diminishing Returns of More Insulation

And the observation that a 200 square foot square wall has twice the heat loss as a 100 square foot is true, but meaningless in terms of assessing insulation needs. You need to compare equal areas to draw conclusions. If I pointed out that a 1000 square foot wall has ten times the energy loss of a similarly insulated 100 square foot wall, I wouldn't conclude it needs ten times the insulation.

I'll restate that I'm all for maximum, sensible levels of insulation, but I'm harping on this because many people with no thermodynamics background think it sounds logical that twice as much insulation will result in cutting their energy costs in half when in fact the incremental increase in savings is highly dependent on what point you're starting from. If you tell somebody who has a $400 a month winter energy bill and a well-insulated house that they might realistically see only a $10-20 a month savings during the coldest months by doubling all the insulation in the house, they might think about the cost-benefit tradeoff. The reality is that, once a house is insulated to code, there may be better and cheaper ways to save more energy -- such as better weather stripping, better caulking around windows, and better sealing of wall penetrations such as receptacle and switch boxes -- than adding more insulation. That is why people who have energy audits of their already well-insulated homes done by reputable individuals (like your utility's conservation staff) are sometimes surprised by the recommendations.

I think anything over twelve feet is insane, makes decorative nightmares and is ridiculous .......making humans feel dwarfed. Like a hotel lobby. jmho. And just about as "cozy".

“I think anything over twelve feet is insane, makes decorative nightmares and is ridiculous .......making humans feel dwarfed. Like a hotel lobby. jmho. And just about as "cozy".”

You assume that everyone wants cozy. I want a hotel lobby feel and a huge space. I’m currently building an addition with a main living room that is roughly 30’x30’ plus attached 10’ diameter circular staircase and approx.24’ ceilings.

With a 5’ deep pool on top covering the whole roof/ceiling and four 5’x5’ glass bottom skylights to view the pool from the room.

i would not do this if I wanted cozy.

A farm house style usually has more wood and warm tones of color, which create a crowded feeling, therefore a high ceiling is actually good to lighten the atmosphere and create a feeling of more space.

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galore2112: Sounds interesting!

I'm currently living in a home with 12' ceilings. I've had historic homes. The highest ceiling was a smidge under 14'. I live in the Deep South and we use high ceilings for heat control. I've seen some homes with very large, long open living/dining/kitchen areas and the 12' ceilings seemed proportional. My hallways that have no windows or natural light seem like refuges when it's hot outside. They aren't cooler, they just seem that way because they are dark without windows. I think the sweet spot is between 10' and 12'. There are not many modern homes that would accommodate more height.

My second story also has 12' ceilings. The upstairs bedrooms and hallways didn't need ceilings this high. But, they do get amazing light.

I don't think we can make an informed judgment without a plan. I'm sure your architect has a full understanding of proportion. I think that is what I would be hammering home to him, keeping the structure proportional. I'm looking forward to seeing what is under development. Please post it when you can.

Kudzu - absolutely true that double insulation will not lead to 1/2 the heating cost. But if you are talking purely wall loses, then yes doubling the insulation will lead to half the heating loss. This of course is not the same as cost. And doubling insulation is a lot.

The point of course is that 18 foot ceilings will not double the heating cost of 9 foot ceilings either. And what the complaint was that cooling and heating the tall ceilings was a huge issue. Sure - but you can make that go away by increasing the insulation.

David-

The point is not that doubling the insulation won't cut in half the remaining rather small energy loss. It's that, when you start with R-20 and double the insulation to R-40, you go from cutting your heat loss by 91% to cutting it by 95%. Hence, the improvement is very small compared to the fact that you have to put in twice as much insulation to get it, and possibly have had to use much larger framing to accomplish that. There isn't even enough room to achieve R-40 in a 2X6 wall cavity with fiberglass, mineral wool, cellulose, polystyrene or polyurethane board, or open or closed cell spray foam. You might be able to achieve it with foil-faced polyisocyanurate, but all the other insulating types would require anywhere from 2X8, to 2X10, or even 2X12 walls to achieve R-40, depending on which type of insulation you were using.

When we are talking about these higher and higher values of insulation to save a couple of percentage points more of energy, the diminishing returns are trivial, especially in light of the cost of the much larger amounts of high end insulation and the very significant costs of much larger framing. The breakeven point for investments like that is so far out in the future that many homeowners won't live long enough to see it even if they live in the home their whole life.

Personally I wouldn't want anything over 9'. HITH are you going to clean those windows sooooooo high up???? IMO.....personally......I think it's more about ego to have ceilings that high.......11-18' or more. YES, your elect bills 'will' be higher. Common sense.

You don't want them so high the room will fill cold and echo. You will need long window treatments and large expensive wall hangings and the fireplace mantle will have to go all the way up, that will look nice though but the wall will probably have a slant somewhere which is difficult to style.

I am looking at putting in a half court basketball court so I need 18 foot ceilings. I also like the industrial, not cozy look in the great room. I am concerned however that I am not being practicle on energy costs.

I'm looking to build a single story home. I want my house to feel big because ive always lived in a small house. I want high ceilings so i was thinking about 16-17 feet high. I fell in love with Kylie Jenner's high ceilings and gray porcelain floors so those will be included in my home. Do you guys think 16-17 feet is too high. Personally, i think not but it would be nice to get other opinions. I'm not worried about the costs.

I'm looking at a three year old thread. If you want advice for your project, start a new thread. it is easy, just go to "Start a discussion" at the top of "your topics" and follow the prompts. Keep a few adjective that children should not hear ready in case it is not as easy as I think.