The proportions of a room with a high ceiling are important as far as how it feels. We have friends with a family room that has a 17-20ft ceiling and the room always feels wrong because it's long and narrow compared to ours, which has length and width dimensions roughly equal to the ceiling height. We have a fireplace that goes all the way up, but it is not clad all the way to the ceiling. We just have a stone surround with a mantel. Our neighbors (same floor plan) just had theirs covered in stone all the way up. It's impressive, but to me feels overwhelming. A certain amount of this is personal preference. It's not something I would do, but they like it. We do have a large two story window in the room. We didn't build this house. If I were building I wouldn't go over ten feet in ceiling height, but that's my preference.

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There is no point ( jmho ) to 20 feet of elevation, if that is what you are asking. Adjacent and lower heights look dwarfed. Window coverings of any type become more complicated, more expensive. Exposure matters even if dollars/energy are not an issue. If a second story? You ate a chunk of that floor. Width and length matter if you want to avoid the feeling of sitting in a milk carton. Ten to 12 feet is plenty gracious and plenty of volume.

Ask the folks who have much higher and then seek cozier areas within their homes when feeling lonely in the vacuous space.

Translated? Be careful what you wish for : )

Completely the wrong scale for a human. Elevator shaft design is terrible design.

@JAN MOYER wrote a masterpiece. My living room is a 20 ft high milk carton. It's unpleasant to sit in there unless my expensive window treatments are blocking the sun that wants to hit me in the eye, fade my rug, and make the TV unwatchable. My furniture looks stupidly short. The worst? The tall walls created an open invitation for DH to decorate them with giant animal heads from hunting trips.

Since you asked for pictures ... this was our living room right after purchasing the house. Many changes since then: removed fireplace, painted walls white, added paneling detail on lower part of wall to try to bring the scale down, squared the top and shrunk the size of the upper window, tried dozens of furniture arrangements, and ... it still feels like sitting in a milk carton.

I'd like to shoot every architect who ever thought this was a great idea. ( Picture above )

Residential architecture should be for humans unless you're building a bat cage.

Classic example of too little depth/breadth to support the height. Too little window exposure......too much drywall. WAH.

"it still feels like sitting in a milk carton"

petula67 - Love that!!! 😂😂😂

Please show your room since redoing. 😉

This is the living room in our vacation home--ceilings 17' tall. Because it is very open and airy, it works. I don't feel dwarfed or like I'm sitting in a milk carton. But I'm not a fan of very high ceilings unless they are carefully considered in context of the whole floor plan and site.

@nhb22 - I pinched the milk carton analogy from @JAN MOYER. I would post a photo, but our room is destroyed right now in preparation for window replacement and drywall repair. It’s hideous in here!

I'm with Jan. Just say no to 20' ceilings. In most applications, 10' is pushing the edge of the envelope. Consider that 10' is typical of many commercial buildings.

Just took quick snap of ours. We live in a log cabin. We went in several log cabins which had lower ceilings and we hated it. We had 10 foot ceilings in our previous house which felt fine but for some reason in a log cabin lower ceilings feel claustrophobic.

Would never build this house with such high(18’) ceilings. At least its bright with south and north exposure! Dont ask me abt heat and cooling bills. Tho we will supplement oil with wood, and pellet .

Ceiling height doesn’t really have any set rules to follow…but we have a shed roof…13’ facing the view..…it is plenty high with an obvious and enjoyable reason for the height…a beautiful view…….of the outdoors…not an overly tall fireplace with its main reason being decor?

Diana your living room is beautiful!

I love how you hung your stained glass over the fireplace, very unique. And the glass piece at the stairs banister!

Our shed roof is 13’ facing the view…at the back of the house..9’ ceilings

We originally intended this wall for a fireplace… but decided to put our bed on the other side for a little privacy element in our totally open floor plan

20 feet seems to work for this architect's home office. (Presuming the view is not of a Walmart parking lot.)

Avoid attempting to live someone else's dream.

I love my 19’ living room ceiling. The room is 19 x 18 with 19. Very bright and airy feeling. Here are a few quick shots, but pardon the mess as I am in the middle of a kitchen remodel.

I'm a high ceiling fan, but I think 20' is too tall (my ceilings will be 16' and pitched.) If you insist on having 20' ceilings, you've got to find a way to bring the scale down so the the space feels good with regular-sized furniture. Here's an example of a home that I toured about 15 years ago with an 18' ceiling. Trusses, clerestory windows, large pendant lighting, the flanking doors, and the way the stone divides the wall all help make the height less overwhelming. I saw this room furnished with large scale sofas/tables/rugs and everything worked together nicely. I believe the room is 16' to 18' wide.

Some folks will pooh-pooh high ceilings as impractical, more expensive (which they are) or plain stupid (it depends); however, for those of us who love them, it's just a matter of getting the details right. Consult a professional; otherwise you may end up with a disaster.

@worthy, if that's a home office, then the architect must be a brutalist. I'd feel like a mouse waiting for a hawk in there. It's worse than a 70s university library!

A quote from my last years forum quotes thread.....

31. "20+ feet [ceiling height] is done to look grand - and it is a super human scale. It is used in government buildings and churches for a reason. To raise the importance of the institution over the human. Do you want your house to diminish your value as a human? If you are trying to impress, you just might alienate as many people as you impress."

I love well proportioned cathedral ceilings. They can make a space look open and airy, IMO. On the other hand, the “milk carton rooms” (love that analogy!) can look very odd and disproportionate. Though there have been a few posted here that don’t look so bad!

We have spent the last several days working on an industrial condo rental we own. It has great city and river views, with 14' ceilings. I had to get a contractor in to change the track lighting bulbs. No idea how I will clean the exposed ductwork. The painter starts tomorrow - $8k for 959 sq. ft. in a LCOL area.

Our house has 10' ceilngs. One can manage that easily with ordinary ladders. No idea how one handles 20' ceilings.

"No idea how one handles 20' ceilings." Very good question. Long ladder works for some tasks like changing batteries in the expensive window treatments you had to buy to stop the sun from melting you, but not for heavier tasks. So then you rent or buy scaffolding from a big box store, which gets you part way up. Homeowners with a death wish put a ladder on top and draw straws for who has to climb it. Person 1 risks life and Person 2 pretends to help stabilize the ladder, unless Person 1 is hanging a giant dead animal head on the wall, then Person 2 considers options.

if that's a home office, then the architect must be a brutalist

Naturellment!

Living and schooled in and appreciating a city with a brutalist heart https://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/toronto-a-brutalist-city I confess a fondness for the form.

Alas, it's mostly seen in public edifices, simply because of the cost and the forces of traditionalist conformity.

<-- traditional conformist.

Well, no. Probably not. But I want my home to fit me, not the Friendly Giant. ;)