Do you like vaulted ceilings?

I’m with you. That’s a lot of additional air conditioner cost.

I can’t help but wonder if vaulted ceilings are a guy thing.

Guy that wishes I had gone with that option. My living room is wide open and well lit. I get so much solar heat the furnace doesn’t run on sunny days in the middle of winter and I get tons of ventilation in the summer.

So the vaulted ceiling has turned out to be a good thing @Adirondackwannabe?

I didn’t do the vaulted ceilings because I was concerned about the heating and cooling. It would have been spectacular though if I had.

I certainly thing they look very stately but I agree that heating and cooling all that extra volume of air is certainly excessively costly. The surfaces up that high are hard to reach. You won’t have many footprint marks or fingerprint smudges up there so I don’t see much need for cleaning up there very often.

Spider webs and dust on ceilings, more than anything.

I like the look, but would have the same concerns that you do.

Plus you’d add a whole other floor to your house if you un-vaulted a ceiling. I’d like one giant room for the kids to tear around in on rainy days.

If you can afford the upkeep and heating costs, go for it. Probably not a great idea if you get a lot of snow (cold weather.) It adds a nice airy open space and the light is great.

I lived in an apartment that had one section vaulted. It looked great. However, I could not reach the light fixture or any bugs that were crawling on the ceiling. I had to use rubber bands to shoot them down.

Vaulted ceilings are like high heels. The look sexy but really are not practical.

We have a home in Park City, Utah. Every year, even in years of drought, our windows are obscured by snow. High ceilings and transoms above the windows and doors help prevent cabin fever, and it helps us keep our sanity.

Are the utility bills prohibitive @snowberry?

It seems that everyone in that area has 12’ ceilings, so it’s hard to compare. Our house is almost 4000 square feet, and that alone makes the energy bills high, but no, it doesn’t seem too bad. We have exceptional insulation too, so that helps as well. Sorry, I can’t come up with a number for you.

It wasn’t really a fair question though, @snowberry. What may be prohibitive for me would be fine for you.

Heat rises. To combat the heat loss you need fans on. To deal with bugs you need a tall ladder. To deal with paint, generally you need a contractor.

While I like the look of vaulted ceilings, having lived with them & rented apartments with them: I see the space and the energy as wasted.

Have them and skylights at my place in Florida. Love the light and the open, airy feeling.

Yes, I love them. I even considered having my living room remodeled to lift the ceilings, but it cost more than buying a new house would have, and this house is 40 years old already.

It doesn’t much matter to me one way or another if someone has jumped over it.

From the responses I can see that it makes a difference whether you live in a warm or cold climate. I live in cold area and try to heat as small a volume as possible. The floor of the attic has at least 12” of insulation between it and the ceiling. I use the attic space for storage.

I live in Kansas, so I have all extremes.

Ehh they look cool at first but I always find myself thinking “so much wasted space….”

I don’t like them. I like high ceilings, but not vaulted. When I live in a cold climate I don’t even want them too high, 10 feet max. In FL I prefer them at least 10 feet. Although, what is more important is that door thresholds and thresholds in general are 8 ft or higher. Even if the ceiling is only 9 feet.

Me too @uberbatman.
Higher ceilings would be cool, but not vaulted. I agree @JLeslie.

Just use the tall doors whatever you do. Trust me. My house in TN had some vaulted ceilings, but short doors and thresholds and it bothered me all 7 years I owned it. We had trouble selling our house, some of my ceilings were 14 feet high, but the house never felt that way to me. I told my husband we need someone short to like it, and damned if the people who bought it aren’t on the short side.

I will remember that @JLeslie. Thanks. :)

I hope you get to the build the house. I remember you did a Q about it a year or so again. Obviously, it really is your dream house :). When my husband and I were first married we saw a house that I loved, but it was much too expensive, so we about a different house that I was very happy in. Two years later, our finances improved and we bought that house we could not afford previously. It was a dream for me. I never had thought I would ever own anything like that. We have sold the house since, but I still can’t believe I ever lived in it, and emotionally it is the most meaningful for me. I have lived in bigger, and what many would say better houses since, but that one I hold closest to my heart.

Are there model homes you can walk through where you live. Don’t just take my word for it, bring your measuring tape with you everywhere you go. Seriously, I always have a measureing tape. I have a little one that is a key chain, and if I know I am going to be looking at a house I bring a better one. I measure ceiling height, door height and width and hall width.

Yeah…someone mentioned my dream house about a month ago, but I’ve looked at a hundred different houses since then, and with everything I’ve gone through, including losing my tool bar recently, I thought it was long gone and I could remember the name of it, or the company. I was cleaning out a filing cabinet yesterday and lo! There was a a print out of all the information that I had printed off way back when! So I pulled it up and…yeah. It is definitely my favorite. Just about perfect.

I’ll make a point of showing you guys where on the land we want to build….

I’ll get me a tape measure to carry in my purse! Thanks @JLeslie!