Why Our Brains Love High Ceilings

http://fastcodesign.com/3043041/evidence/why-our-brains-love-high-ceilings

by prostoalex • 11 years ago

86 42 11 years ago

What I find more interesting given how much people love high ceilings why they won’t pay the extra cost of having them? What is stopping the market supplying what people want?

aklemm• 11 years ago

Cost. Everybody wants steak, too, but only hamburger can be afforded every day.

danieltillett6• 11 years ago

It must be more than straight cost since properties with high ceilings sell for a premium over those with a low ceiling. The demand is there and customers seem willing to pay, but the market does not seem to be meeting that demand (at least in Australia).

Spooky232• 11 years ago

Low ceilings in nice houses started in the 70s when energy costs went up and building styles changed to boxy, "sealed" environments. Low ceilings are more efficient from an HVAC POV.

People like high ceilings, but it's a "nice to have" for most people. Also that like changes from time to time -- in the 80s, old buildings with high ceilings were looked down upon.

Also, new construction costs have escalated so much that new homes are stripped to the bone in most cases. Your $500k house will have a $50 "builder grade" faucet, for example.

danieltillett6• 11 years ago

In Australia it has created houses that did not need AC to houses that are unliveable without AC.

I know in my area a property with high ceilings will sell for a premium over one with low ceiling. It is really interesting to see this effect in properties built around the change over time where the older property is 5% more expensive than a similar property a few years younger but with low ceilings.

empressplay• 11 years ago

One of the things I loved about moving to Australia was all of the houses with 10 or 12 foot ceilings. I live in a place with 12 foot ceilings now and I love it. I definitely find I feel more calm and relaxed.

danieltillett6• 11 years ago

These are almost only ever found in old houses (pre 1970). The reason for high ceilings is cooling - Australia in general is a pretty warm place and cooling is ever a problem. I live in a property that was built in 1929 and it has 11 foot ceiling and is cool enough in summer that I don’t have air conditioning.

After 1970 the regulations were changed and all the houses were built with 8 foot ceilings to save money. I hate these low ceilings as they feel totally oppressive.

ars3• 11 years ago

8 foot ceilings to save money.

Does that really save all that much money? Seems like it would be only a percent or two extra.

picks_at_nits2• 11 years ago

As Spooky23 explains elsewhere in the thread, it’s the A/C costs that matter. With 12 foot ceilings, you need the A/C less, But when A/C was a big new thing, it was much less efficient and much more expensive than it is today. And back then, adding 50% to the height of a floor made it much harder to keep at frigid temperatures.

cylinder• 11 years ago

On the flip side, the house designs completely ignore winter, lack insulation and adequate heating systems, so even in a mild 10C winter you will be extremely uncomfortable inside your own home. I was so uncomfortable in winter in Melbourne compared to New York; this is a common complaint from expats there.

cma2• 11 years ago

If low ceilings were more expensive than high ceilings, and photos/videos of creative people in their high-end design studios working on marketing campaigns, feature film, graphic design, and photography were always in low-ceiling'ed spaces rather than wide open exposed beam converted warehouses, etc. that we see today, the study might observe the opposite effect. And the same article might be written saying low ceilings are better for creativity because they are cozy and bring potent genetic memories of the kind of small hand built shelters early humanity evolved with.

Probably not, but just a thought.

fractaled• 11 years ago

So, to paraphrase, "if things were not as they are we could come to a different conclusion". Yes, that is a thought, it was not worth writing down though.

_greim_• 11 years ago

...it was not worth writing down though.

I disagree. Nature versus nurture is a difficult but interesting topic. Is our preference for high ceilings caused by culture and experience, or is it something we're genetically predisposed to? It seems like it would be a hard question to answer, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth thinking about.

dang• 11 years ago

Please don't say rude things to other users on HN, even when you consider a comment bad. It only makes the site worse for all of us.

cma2• 11 years ago

I was basically saying maybe the cause for the creativity increase in test subjects is due to a cultural association of high-status creative occupations rather than because the extra head-space tingles our neural spatial exploration networks.

In the alternate "high ceiling'ed places yield lower creativity" world, maybe we would say of the same exact fMRI study that obviously the neural spatial exploration networks are being overloaded by processing the tall room, hindered from devoting neural energy to the creative tasks at hand like they can so efficiently in the low-ceiling rooms, or some other story.

Cloudy• 11 years ago

An architect once told me that low ceilings are desirable in certain parts of homes because they give a very comforting, secure presence.

High ceilings do feel better for group and work spaces, room to breath.

[0] an actual anecdote that happened to me.

picks_at_nits2• 11 years ago

Frank Lloyd Wright used low ceilings in entranceways so that the house would “open up” as you walked into it.

abandonliberty• 11 years ago

Pedant moment. You want the verb form, breathe.

"Breath" is a noun that means "the air taken into or expelled from the lungs."

seanalltogether• 11 years ago

While reading the article I was wondering what the affects of a low ceiling would have on sleeping habits.

marinabercea• 11 years ago

Sample size of 1, but I generally feel more relaxed and creative when I work in a (large-ish) place with high ceilings. If I need extreme focus for moderately short periods of time, I tend to revert to preferring a small, low ceiling place. Confounding factors most likely involved.

ttty• 11 years ago

Now relationate the ceiling height in countries with something like creativity, open mind...

wrongc0ntinent• 11 years ago

Always thought there might be an evolutionary link to preference for literal headroom. Won't speculate which direction a study on this might go, but there are plenty of reasons to suspect a link.

MiguelVieira• 11 years ago

This was covered in "A Pattern Language" decades ago, under Ceiling Height Variety:

the mere fact that the ceiling heights vary, allows people to move from high rooms to low rooms, and vice versa, according to the degree of intimacy they seek — because they know that everyone correlates intimacy with ceiling height.
According to this theory, the effect of the ceiling height is not direct; there is instead a complex interaction between people and space, in which people read the different ceiling heights in a building as messages, and take up positions according to these messages. They are comfortable or uncomfortable according to whether they can take part in this process, and can then feel secure in the knowledge that they have chosen a place of appropriate intimacy.

mhomde• 11 years ago

"A Pattern language" is such a great book, its' a shame its kinda forgotten by many these days. Whenever I talk to an architect I ask them if they've read it and I've yet to get a "yes".

Anyways, highly recommended, if nothing else to get insight in human patterns regarding living spaces and communities

err4nt• 11 years ago

My dad isnt a giant, but he's 6‘4“ and he sometimes feels the need to duck when going through doorways. I'm not as tall as him, but watching him reflexively stoop below obstacles hanging from the ceiling has made me think around headroom a lot.

Headroom and legroom were also deciding factors in every single car purchase we ever made. What good is a car you dont fit into?

xahrepap• 11 years ago

I'm 6'7". I would say I like tall ceilings because I'm sick of hitting my head on chandeliers and ceiling fans. :)

The funny thing is, I've noticed it doesn't matter how tall the ceilings are, but they always screw up the stairways in homes. I always have to duck to go down stairs. My house has 8 1/2 foot ceilings in the basement. I have to duck just as much as I do in houses with shorter ceilings. Or so it seems.

vq• 11 years ago

I'm 1.95 and I almost always duck slightly when passing a door, even when there is space and no threshold. Its like a bad habit.

I'm lucky when it comes to cars, most cars I've driven has been alright when pushing the seat all the way back, if I'd been slightly taller it would've been a different story.

nullc• 11 years ago

Oh it has FMRI results.

I wonder what dead salmon think of high ceilings? ( http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf )

agumonkey• 11 years ago

Is it the ceiling or the closed environment ? As a kid I loved to be tucked in the smallest space, it felt like a nest (some times, very weirdly, I even fantasized about sleeping in a big drawer, inside a cupboard). All dimensions mattered. Would people relax in a low ceiling with a very very long (or large or both) room ?

Ceilings bring me to our relationship with verticality. We don't experience large vertical dimensions the same way we do with horizontal ones. IIRC system theorists argued we were wired differently to perceive dimensions because of gravity.

Why Our Brains Love High Ceilings

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