Now, the swirl pattern is usually done by mudding the ceiling and taking a trowel or other object and just manually swiping it over the wet compound and letting it dry. It was originally done to cover imperfections on old plaster ceilings, and it 'caught on' and most new homes here had them and still do.....done on drywall. I think contractors like to do them, because it takes the work away from having to do a very even skim coat and sanding it to make a perfect surface for paint. I have sanded the swirls down on those dudes in one house I owned. I actually like to work plaster and drywall finish and have been in the process of finishing off walls in my old house over the years my husband had slapped wallpaper on, because he was time constrained to move in and it was the easiest finish to put up and cover minor imperfections on the plaster. My God, the rooms were so 'busy' with all the different patterns, it got to me. I have never had a popcorn ceiling, but they look like nightmares as far as collecting dirt and grime in the crevices. I think most of them are blown on with a special applicator. If you do sand the ceilings or walls to remove swirl texturing, you would want to know the composition of the wall as to lead or other dangerous material in the plaster or finish..... and proceed accordingly, and also want to use very good respiratory protection.

That is a tough decision to make. I think the costs of plaster over drywall are pretty steep- at least in my area. Although I prefer plaster as it has better sound reduction qualities and just feels better, IMHO. On the couple of walls I had to tear out, I replaced with the thickest drywall I could find to at least attempt to get a thicker wall to fit with my moldings. The other thing to consider is that if you have a Tudor (castle style?), many of the ones I've been in do have a special type of texture on the walls, so to match that would definitely be best left to the pros. I have used both the lime based plaster for Venetian plaster and the newer acrylic stuff. The first was tougher to apply and took a good bit of practice to get it to look good. If I didn't like it, I just sanded it down and started over. Huge mess! I just applied the acrylic on my breakfast nook walls. It was super easy to make it look good, but very time consuming. If, in the future, I want to repaint those walls, the texture will remain, but the burnished finish of course, will be gone. Which of the two is better? I'm not sure- I think it depends on the ability of whomever is applying it, and of course your patience level! If you are doing it, be prepared for it to take a good bit of time. Where I live, they offer classes in the clay process at the local eco- home improvement store. If you are planning on doing this- that might be a route to try.

CE - just found your note and wanted to follow up. At the GC's suggestion, we waited until they were ready for the final coat. They came and did the one room that was separate from the rest of the house. After 3 days of curing, I went in to wipe it down (with a wet cloth), to verify it looked ok. It was a nightmare - not only had pieces of lint and dust gotten into the finish, but they also managed to seal over areas where the painters had managed to drip paint on the 2nd coat - it wasn't a lot of paint, but small drips and smudges permanently sealed under the poly. And they were scheduled to come the next day to do the rest of the 1st floor. I sent pictures to the GC and told him that either the painters or the floor guy needed to verify that all the paint was gone from the rest of the floors before putting down the 3rd coat in the rest of the house and that we needed to meet to discuss what to do about all of the paint, hair, lint, etc. that was already sealed in the poly. I then spent the rest of the night, washing the entire 1st floor on my hands and knees, marking all of the paint, dust, hair, etc. in both parts of the house. The next day the painters came and cleaned all of the paint that was on floors that didn't have the 3rd coat applied. The floor guys came and scrapped by hand all of the places where they had sealed in the paint and where lint and dust landed on the floors. the day after that they came and redid the separate room and the rest of the house. After all of that, there were still a few places with paint in the original room that they had missed. They used a special lacquer pen of some sort to mark over the few spots and you can't tell there's paint under the poly. The floors finally look great, but, I firmly believe only because I spent the time on my hands and knees marking every spot. The floor guys blamed the painters for being so sloppy and the GC for removing the paper covering too soon (before the painters were completely finished, as they had to return about 16 times before we would sign off on their work - lint in the paint (I think they quit cleaning their brushes at some point), areas where they didn't prime the wood before it was installed, so they just painted it, and it raised the grain, so they had to go back and sand then repaint), areas where the switch/outlet covers weren't flush with walls (painters were responsible for finishing the drywall) - and when they did things like just try to fill in around plate covers without removing the covers, we removed the covers and had them do it again. A lot of work on our part, but it seemed to be the only way to get them to do the work correctly. And the GC just left it up to us to identify anything we didn't like. I did get tired have having them come back again and again, but I also knew that if they didn't fix it, I was going to be the one who was going to fix it, because I certainly wasn't going to live with having to look at all of the flaws in their work. After a very long 9 months, we're very nearly finished with the project. Whew...

Maybe you can try a large swatch of the finalists and see what happens after a couple weeks. It depends on what color your "dirt" is. Your side yard is all paved so I don't really know that you would pick up much from the ground. The light stucco on my building bases did not seem to get too dirty. Some of the darker colors were darker than the actual dirt or airborne "soot" or whatever it is, and showed dirt more. Kind of like a dark car (or black pants to use your analogy)...So it depends on your local environment.