The plain white ceiling is a surprisingly modern habit, and a rather timid one. For most of decorative history, the ceiling was where a room showed off. Michelangelo gave the Sistine Chapel its heavens; the great Baroque palaces dissolved their ceilings into painted skies and tumbling clouds; the stately homes of England crowned their finest rooms with ornate plasterwork and gilded detail, because everyone understood that the eye, sooner or later, travels upward.
Somewhere in the last century we lost our nerve and painted it all white. The papered ceiling, now fashionably known as the fifth wall, is simply a rediscovery of something the grandest rooms knew all along. It is worth remembering how much time we actually spend gazing at it: lying in bed, soaking in the bath, leaning back at the dinner table. All that space, and most of us give it over to blank white.
"For most of history, the ceiling was where a room showed off. Then we lost our nerve and painted it white."
Why the Fifth Wall Is Having Its Moment
The papered ceiling has surged back into fashion, and it is no passing whim. As rooms have grown bolder and more enveloping again, the ceiling has become the surface that completes the cocoon. Taking pattern or colour up and over the top of a room, rather than stopping abruptly at the cornice, is the same instinct behind colour drenching, carried to its most delightful conclusion.
There is also a clever practical magic to it. A papered ceiling draws the eye up and can make a low room feel taller, especially when the design carries seamlessly from the walls, blurring the line where they meet. Gardenia Breeze, from Heirloom by Superfresco Easy, takes the gentler route of a contrast, a soft floral set into the coffers above a checked room. Greenacre, from Jardine Florals by Colefax and Fowler, does the seamless version, running the same trailing leaf up the walls and straight on over the eaves so the room has no edges left to find.
Gardenia, Breeze by Superfresco Easy
Greenacre, Forest Green by Colefax and Fowler
"Taking pattern up and over the ceiling wraps a room entirely, and completes the cocoon."
Three Ways to Dress a Ceiling
Part of the joy of the fifth wall is how differently it can be played, from the theatrical to the serene. The first is the canopy. Run a stripe across a ceiling, drawing it in towards a central point, and the whole room takes on the air of a tent. It is a trick with grand old roots, from the tented rooms of Regency dandies to the striped awnings of a summer marquee, and it lends a space real theatre.
The second is the mural, and this is the fifth wall at its most whimsical. Float a scene above your head, a drifting sky, a canopy of leaves and birds, a starry night, and you turn the ceiling into a window onto somewhere else entirely. Bamburgh Sky, from Embleton Bay by Sanderson, does it softly, carrying a watercolour sky up a sloping bedroom ceiling. There is a particular magic to a mural overhead where the last thing you see before sleep, and the first each morning, is something worth looking at.
The third, for those who would rather not shout, is the cocoon. You need no pattern at all to make the fifth wall count: carry a single plain colour up from the walls and over the ceiling, woodwork and all, and the room is wrapped completely in one enveloping shade. A quiet all-over print works the same way, reading as texture rather than pattern from below. At the other end sits Allurium in Day, from Woven Reverie by Graham & Brown, shown here on a bathroom's walls rather than overhead, and exactly the sort of full-blooded design a bathroom ceiling will take.
Bamburgh Sky, Estuary Blue by Sanderson
Allurium, Day by Graham & Brown
"Canopy, mural or cocoon: the ceiling can be as theatrical or as serene as you like."
Where to Look Up
Some rooms are made for a papered ceiling. The bedroom is the obvious place to start, since you spend a good deal of time looking up from the pillow, and a bathroom rewards the same trick above a bath. A dining room ceiling comes alive by candlelight, and a downstairs cloakroom, that reliable little box of bravery, is the perfect low-stakes place to try something exuberant overhead. Bellis in Misty Blue, from Kolonin II by Sandberg, shows the quietest version of it: the same small sprig on the walls and straight on over the ceiling, so the room simply has no lid.
Bellis, Misty Blue by Sandberg
A few things help it sit right. In a lower room, carrying the same design up the walls and over the top creates a seamless, height-enhancing effect; in a taller one, a contrasting ceiling is a wonderful surprise. Busier patterns feel enveloping overhead, while a soft sky or a subtle plain keeps things light. As always, a gesture like this deserves a sample first, taped up and looked at properly.
The ceiling is the one surface in every room that almost nobody thinks to decorate, which is precisely why doing so is so effective. Look up, and you will find the most exciting blank canvas in the house has been there all along.
Where to Go Next
Start with where to start with wallpaper, then try the other unexpected places to use it, or read on for choosing a colour and decorating the rest of the room around it.
