gwlake: I am unsure of the exact depth of the coffer but I was shown something visually when we were talking about the plans that I approved. It is not as deep as what you show me, no. We are working with ten foot ceilings and we will have french doors on the left- standard size with 14 inch transoms above.

Same color would be pretty - and easy. When you cut or adjust a formula, you're creating a completely different color. Every dimension of the color is changed, hue, value, chroma, LRV. The new color might resemble the old color in some way, but there's no way to know until you have it mixed, dry it out and look at it. In the case of Agreeable Gray specifically, if you cut it by 50% you get a light gray that looks a lot like SW 6000 Snowfall. Agreeable Gray and Snowfall don't look good together - they don't "go" together. If you want a color that looks like Agreeable Gray, just lighter try White Heron SW 7627 for the ceiling. If you pull all three chips, Agreeably Gray, Snowfall and White Heron, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Thank you all....the house is still in the build mode....the third picture I shared is of an existing model. And yes it will look similar barring the windows where we are not doing the grids. It seems like most of you are leaning towards coffered ceilings - right? to maintain the harmony. The confusion we were having was driven by my wife's liking for the beams - but seems like they will be a misfit in the rest of the design....agree?

I don't care for it. Why not paint the coffer?