Check with your builder to see what the difference is between 8', 9', and 10'. To stay proportional the windows and doors may need to be custom sized to fit. We had a 9' ceiling for 25 years. We just moved to an 8' ceiling house. I'm 6' and don't have a problem with the difference. With 9 or higher you will need a ladder to reach higher. With 8-ft I use a step stool. Heat does rise. In the winter this means you will want a fan to stir the warm air down with the cooler air. I used a table fan placed on the ground and aimed toward the ceiling. It makes a big difference. In the summer the same thing happens. I run the fan 24/7/365. Smoke rises, too. We had a house fire several years ago in the 9-ft house. It started in the kitchen where there were no smoke detectors. Smoke had to fill the kitchen ceiling down to the door frames before it poured into the dining room. Then it had to fill the dining room down to the door frames. Once it filled the dining room it had to fill the living room down to the door frames. Once it filled the living room it set off the smoke detector in the hallway. The fire burned for at least 30 minutes, and I was awake the entire time in a lower part of the house. So if you are wiring for wired smoke detectors, keep that in mind.

I saw a few flags go up: "in the midst of a major renovation" "trying to keep within budget" "raising the first floor to 9ft ceilings" "a very open floorplan on the first floor" "would it be simpler to reinforce the existing first floor 8ft ceiling" "second floor is going to be built the 9ft ceiling" All of these statements conflict with one another, and together they may say to tear the house down and start from scratch. If you have started renovation the questions you are asking should have been determined a long time ago. Generally raising the ceiling height on an existing home is costly. Large spaces call for more elaborate ceiling/floor structure above. Hire an architect, if you have not already; somebody has to protect you from you.

Agree 100% with what David Cary said. Our current project is a heavy reno of a house with 9' ceilings but with 6'8 head heights for doors and windows, and even with the lower ceiling height 6'8 feels bizarrely low - way too much sheetrock between the top of the windows and the ceilings. In addition to looking weird the rooms are darker as a result. We're pushing all the headers up to 8' in the 9' rooms and 10' in our 11' room. I find it quite bizarre that details like this are offered as adjustable items in the contract. It makes me wonder if they will in fact scale everything else up, or leave you with something oddball like I just described that you'll be unhappy with. Typically the height of the ceiling is something that is integral to the design of the house as it impacts not only the appearance of the rooms from the inside but also the exterior elevations. If you have an upstairs it's also something you have to think about (10' means going up two more risers to reach the 2nd floor - so many 2 storey houses around here are designed to have their second storeys built over 9' sections, and have living rooms with higher ceilings built outside the footprint of the second storey).

cpartist give excellent suggestions for how to deal with 10 foot tall kitchens, keeping the ambiance Craftsman and attractive. I will note I find 9 foot tall ceilings plenty fine for me, but go with feels comfortable to you. Although I do have a cathedral ceiling in the public part of the house.... (No, my house is not Craftsman). As someone else noted, you'll have to change your door heights and other aspects of your home to go with the increase in ceiling height - and that's not going to be cheap. Even at six foot one, I don't feel cramped in homes that have 8 foot ceilings - I was just in one (probably built in the 60s or 70s) this past Sunday (after months of not being to get out and visit folk very often at all). It was fine. But 9 doesn't affect pricing as much as 10 feet would. Please don't do without upper cabinets. You'll hurt resale, as not everyone is going to want to stop everything and remodel as soon as they move in. Even though I mostly have drawers, the lowest one is always a pain to access anyway..