XXV. Ceilings

One of the most widespread of the popular delusions about houses is expressed in the demand for a high ceiling, quite irrespective of the scale of the house or the size of its apartments. The mansion, with its numerous apartments and lofty rooms, is still the model for the small house. Under the pressure of the limited site and limited means the rooms are inexorably reduced till each is too small for human habitation, but still the lofty ceiling is retained, partly because it is an attribute of the ideal mansion, and partly because of the baseless superstition that it is healthy.

This “hygienic falsehood,” as Mr. Voysey justly describes it, has been sufficiently exposed, but apparently to little purpose. Conditions of perfect ventilation are quite independent of the cubic capacity of a room. A man enclosed in a box sufficient only to accommodate his person may enjoy perfect hygienic conditions as regards ventilation. But the question is not one between a small cubic capacity and a large cubic capacity. We have, it may be assumed, a certain sum of money to expend in cubic feet of air in a room, and the question is, how are these cubic feet best arranged to secure the best results—to what extent shall they be disposed vertically, to what extent horizontally? Now it is obvious that, as man cannot fly but wants all the elbow-room he can get in a small house, it will be wise for him to extend his rooms as much as possible horizontally, and as little as possible vertically; and the first improvement which suggests itself in the small house will be to make it lower and broader, so that all the wasted space overhead may be exchanged for extension of the floor area. Such a change, it must be borne in mind, will not decrease the cubic capacity or increase the cost. Not only will it increase the actual size, it will also add to the apparent size of the rooms. They will become at once large rooms of a small kind instead of small rooms of a large kind. We shall so far achieve the roomy cottage instead of the cramped mansion. It is unfortunate that the by-laws in many districts reflect the popular superstition in this matter, and minimum heights of ceilings are often fixed which make it impossible to build a small house on rational lines.

For the height of the ceiling is not an isolated and independent feature in the plan, which may be modified at will. It is one of the ruling factors in the design of a house, and governs the whole structure. The long, low window of the horizontal type, which has so many practical advantages, follows as a necessary result of the long, low room. The staircase becomes easy of ascent and occupies little space. The house itself becomes broad and low and snug, and in its rooms this breadth and spaciousness is exchanged for the cramped floor-spaces of the vertically extended house. The ceiling, too, comes into the picture of the room and completes it, and the whole effect is comfortable and homely.

The fixing of the ceiling height of rooms, which is often so thoughtlessly and lightly decided, will influence its final effect inside and outside far more than any subsequent decorations, and the initial mistake made of a badly proportioned room will consume the abilities of the decorator in trying to palliate it with all kinds of divisions of the wall-space.

The test of good proportion in a room, as in a house, is that the structure can be left alone if desired, and while its wall-spaces may be subdivided horizontally for decorative purposes, this is not essential to palliate bad proportions or to disguise the defects of the original structure.

One of the most important functions of the ceiling is to act as a reflector for light, and for this purpose it is generally advisable that it should be white.

In cases where the joists of the floor above are shown in the ceiling, the most important consideration will be the proper “deafemng” of the floor. This may be done as shown in Fig. i, where two thicknesses of boards are used for the floor, with a layer of felt between. It will be noticed that the joists are here flatter in proportion than those generally used, and they should also be somewhat wider apart than modern usage demands.

The under side of the flooring-boards and the joists and beam may all be left roughly finished from the saw, with the edges merely taken off them, and then the whole may be whitewashed. In the spacing, as well as the actual sizes of the joists, it is not desirable that mechanical accuracy should be insisted on. They may be placed with such regularity in their distance apart as the eye may be able to judge, and it would be well also if they slightly varied in size, and all these slight variations in the size, direction, and spacing of the timbers will give a vitality to the whole effect, and the eye will not be repelled and chilled by that monotonous and cast-iron regularity which is the ideal of modern work. It is the eye of the observer which is to be satisfied with such work, and to the intelligent there will be no pleasure in an inhuman precision which is obviously obtained by mechanical means.

There are occasions and places in the building where an extreme accuracy is necessary, but in this, as in many other cases, a certain variety is essential. It is just such little points as these which make the difference between the vital beauty of old buildings and the lifeless uniformity of modern ones.

Other and more elaborate ceilings may be divided into panels with wooden ribs. In such cases there is an obvious departure from the floor structure of the room above, and such panellings should therefore not be too-structural in their character, but of such sizes as will I lead to the recognition of their superficial character. They may most reasonably be used in passages where it may be desirable to form the ceiling at a lower level than the upper floor, and the narrower the passage the lower its ceiling should be. Nothing is so fatal as the Procrustean method of-f making every department of the house of the same height irrespective of the size of each, and nothing makes a narrow passage look so narrow as a disproportionately high ceiling.

In the treatment or the plaster ceiling it will be well to consider first whether the plaster cornice is really necessary. It; does not in its usual forms represent a reasonable use of the material, because plaster is necessarily a superficial substance, and should as far as possible clothe the structure like a close-fitting garment. The cornice has no structural significance whatever, and is merely an expedient to get round the corner between wall and ceiling. A much better way in most cases is to omit the cornice altogether, and whitewash the whole of frieze and ceiling. In this way, the angle between ceiling and wall will practically disappear in the universal whiteness. The plaster ceiling should not, moreover, be made absolutely; and mechanically level, except as a basis tor superficial decoration. The pplasterer should not be allowed to use a long float,” but it should only be; permissible for him to gain such regularity as may be possible in the use cof a short “float” with the assistance of the eye. I do not suggest that the ceiling should be obviously irregular. It should appear to the casual observer to be quite level, but it should present a subtle variety and ( change of plane in its surface. Why, too, it may be asked, should the plaster ceiling be necessarily finished with what is called “fine stuff”.? Plaster has a characteristic texture, which is far more interesting than the smoothhness of finish invariably insisted on. Such subtle modifications in the plasterring of a ceiling will all tend towards vitality in the appearance of the work.

Perhaps the most reasonable and effective way of decorating a plaster ceiling is by means of the use of modelled plaster work, which Mr. Bankart has so bravely rescued from mechanical ineptitudes. Here the modelling should be vague and suggestive rather than sharp and incisive, and flowers and fruit should seem to have floated, as it were, to the surface—to have been coaxed from their white bed instead of stuckk on to a surface from which they are clearly detached.

Much of the old plaster work has obtained an excellent quality by repeated coats of whitewash, and if any of the mechanical embossed materials are used, their undesirable sharpness can be removed I by the same means.

It is not necessary, if modelled plaster is used, to have an elaborate scheme of decoration for the ceiling. Much may be done by stamps, such as those used for pats of utter.

In upper rooms it is often possible to obtain an excellent effect by means of a curved segmented ceiling, which affords an excellent field for decoration in many ways, and in a room where the walls are covered with leafage with glimpses of blue sky, this ceiling may develop into a blue sky without a cloud and set with circlinpg swallows.

The consideration of vaulted ceilings hardly comes within the scope of my present subject, and can but be barely touched on here. A small example of this form of ceiling occurs in the little staircase to the room over the fireplace in the hall, illustrated in the description of Blackwell.

Simple types of vaulting may often be used in corridors with excellent effect, but this method of ceiling is hardly appropriate for the average room.