Ceiling beams are a constructive part of most country houses, both wooden and brick. In typical urban apartments, it is customary to mask them, finishing with finishing, shining, plastering, whitewashing, stucco molding, concrete floors or gypsum boards. Open ceiling beams in apartment buildings are a rarity today. If the owners of the country cottages can initially plan the interior of the living rooms with ceiling beams, then the citizens still have to rely on decorative materials. But false beams are not always appropriate in urban housing, because this element is associated with spacious rooms and high ceilings. However, with proper skill and taste, it is easy to fit decorative beams into the interior of a small house and apartment.
Objectives and benefits of using ceiling beams
Decorative ceiling beams are able to give a unique color to the dwelling, to emphasize the style, be it an apartment or a private house. However, in addition to decorating functions, this element successfully copes with practical tasks. In particular, decorative beams on the ceiling perform the functions:
- visual expansion of space, changes in the geometry of the room;
- zoning large rooms, studios, living rooms;
- focusing on the ceiling as an architectural element and part of the interior;
- fasteners for built-in and pendant lamps;
- masking electrical wiring, communications, irregularities, joints of ceiling elements.
Any bearing and decorative beams (with the exception of plasterboard elements), firmly and securely mounted, can be used to fasten a variety of parts and objects. So, in the kitchen, beams are used to store utensils hanging on hooks. It is also common for rural interior styles to hang dried herbs, garlic, and onions in bundles in the kitchen. You can hang the hood on strong beams if the kitchen has an island layout.
Hollow products are suitable for laying cable channels, on such beams you can mount not only the built-in and pendant lights but also plasma TVs on the brackets. Strong ceiling beams withstand the weight of large and small suspended structures, including sofa swings, cocoon chairs (as in the photo below), hammock, children’s bassinet, canopy over the bed.
Materials for the manufacture of decorative beams
Today, beams on the ceiling are not a rough finish, but a highlight of the interior, a trendy accent of the room in the style of chalets, Provence, modern and even high-tech. If you want to decorate your home with a decorative construction of beams, there is a large selection of ready-made elements of all colors and textures from:
- wood, MDF, chipboard;
- metal;
- polyurethane and drywall;
- fiberglass;
Constructions of drywall and polyurethane serve exclusively decorative functions. They are almost weightless, easy to install, and the abundance of decorative coatings allows you to choose any color for the desired type of wood, different texture, imitation of stone, metal, aged and course material. The beams made of MDF or chipboard are decorated with color film or natural veneer with a wide color palette, they are strong enough to withstand suspensions, chandeliers, and other lamps.
Wooden beams are ideal for houses with natural wood ceilings, for log houses, eco-friendly interiors, rustic, and chalets. Their main drawback is the difficulty of selecting the desired color for the type of wood. Durable and practical wooden beams made of teak, ash, beech, oak, pine, larch, softwood, resistant to moisture, treated with special compounds. Ceilings in luxurious interiors are often decorated with beams of precious and rare woods.
Fiberglass and metal are an excellent choice for modern interiors in the style of a loft, hi-tech.
Features of the choice of ceiling beams
It is believed that the beams in a small room or on a low ceiling – is nonsense, but this is not entirely true. Designers successfully use beams of contrasting dark color for visual expansion of space. They seem to raise the white ceiling. If the ceiling has a round or domed shape, then it’s coloring in blue color or stretch ceiling of azure hue above the beams will create the effect of a room in the open air. By installing contrast beams along the long walls of the room, you visually shorten their length, beams under the ceiling will lift it, and those located just below will lower it.
If we are talking about a mansard room, a large spacious hall with a double-slope or multi-slope roof, you can create an amazingly beautiful architectural structure from the beams. A specialist who is used to working with wood will transform simple wooden elements into lace arches, arches, fabulous castles, and large chandeliers in tone will be a worthy decoration of this miracle.
The easiest way to decorate beams in a small room is their whitewashing or painting in one tone with the ceiling. In houses and rooms decorated with wood, lining, in log cabins, beams on the ceiling should be wooden, the same tone as the other finishes. Classic interiors are characterized by a combination of decorative beams with furniture and furnishings: they must be identical in color, texture, and grade.
Ceiling with beams in different styles of interior
In both large and small rooms, decorated with beams, the fundamental factor in their use is not the size, but the style of the interior. You can create a harmonious space, adhering to the general idea and applying certain techniques characteristic of one or another type of design.
Beams in a classic interior
The simple wooden beams of expensive types of wood against the background of a light ceiling perfectly set off the bedroom, kitchen or living room in a classic and neoclassical style. Pomperity is alien to this type of design, so wood of beams balances and adds severity to a room with carved wooden furniture, a parquet floor of a similar shade and even with gold-embossed wallpaper with a soft tone, as in the photo.
Provence and Mediterranean style
Provence style, as well as the Mediterranean interior design, to simple and uncomplicated materials, textures, natural shades. In the atmosphere of the Italian or French provinces, wooden whitewashed or light beams perfectly get along with the same whitewashed walls, brass, copper, and earthenware, terracotta tiled floors with imitation stone, as in the example in the photo. Provence is distinguished by bleached, faded paint, even metal and cast-iron chandeliers, forged elements of beds, tables, and chairs are painted white. The Mediterranean style has absorbed more of the rich colors of the sea, grass, land, fruit, but both of these areas are rustic, and natural wood is more than appropriate here.
Decorating beamed ceilings in Victorian interiors
The style of good old England, its Victorian era, as well as its colonial variety, suggests a total veneer of all surfaces. On the floor it is parquet flooring, furniture made of valuable wood, walls are often covered with wooden panels, and this hymn of the past era complements the large leather armchairs and sofas with a capito stitch. On the ceiling, also decorated with mahogany, squares of decorative beams look organic.
Ceiling beams in modern style interiors
Art Nouveau style is prone to artistic excesses. In this embodiment, the dark wooden beams of elegant design will be well combined with equally exquisite wrought-iron chandeliers, stairs with lace railings, hand-painted walls and a fireplace lined with light marble tiles.
Chalets and country: natural and deliberate rudeness
Chalet style originated in Switzerland, country – in the American outback, but they have a lot in common, including a love for natural finishing materials, solid, solid and bulky furniture. An obligatory element of the living room in the style of a chalet or country is a fireplace lined with natural rough stone, a large oak table with benches or chairs, forged lamps-suspensions and decorative beams, dark and rough to the touch, against a white ceiling. In the country interior, decorative beams can be of the same tone with the wooden ceiling and walls; they are perfectly combined with the stone and wooden plank floor, facing the walls of natural stone.
Interior design in the marine style
Maritime style – the concept is rather vague, to a greater extent it is determined by the elements of decor and colors, but the materials used for decoration play an important role. So, for the decoration of the living room, nursery or bedroom in a marine style, usually use natural materials: paint, plaster, wallpaper, wooden elements, pebbles, shells. In textiles and wallpaper, blue, whitish, turquoise, and blue tones predominate, there are decorative elements made of ropes, jute, imitating ship ropes and nets. Rough wooden beams on the ceiling, as if they were tattered by a bug, will enhance the effect, besides, you can place stylish suspensions-lanterns, curtains resembling sails, hang a hammock, like on a real schooner.
Hi-tech and loft: metal structures
Metal and fiberglass beams, hollow inside, in interiors designed in the style of a loft or high-tech, usually serve to accommodate hidden lighting or decorative lamps, laying cable channels, wiring, pipes. They organically fit into the rough design of modern studios, lofts with brick walls, tall ceilings, with bedrooms on the “second floor” and rooms with minimal decor with increased functionality. The versatility and versatility of products made of fiberglass and light metal allow them to simultaneously become a bright accent of some rooms and seamlessly integrate into others of a different orientation, where there is no place for decoration and excesses.
Choose your style, mix different directions and experiment with the ceiling decoration of the beams: this fashionable and effective technique can drastically change the usual interior with minimal cost!
