Wood ceilings - what's the the skinny?
Ahhh, the charm of a wood ceiling, seriously, what's not to like?The intent of this page is less about talking you out of installing gypsum board (drywall), and more about giving you a little encouragement if you are hesitantly considering a wood ceiling.
这是一个人可以轻松处理的天然产品,捡起来更轻,当然在安装时更容易举过头顶。
作为切割机,你要注意木材的弯曲,有问题的结,并选择最好的部分来保留或清除。作为安装人员,你选择的颜色和纹理图案搭配起来很好看,所以如果你是那种参与他们工作的人,甚至会有一定的艺术表达。当你的大脑有更多的事情要做,需要做一些次要的决定时,你会感到更投入;这使得安装木质天花板的任务变得更加有趣。
That’s a personal opinion of course, and that said, I enjoy doing a little bit of drywalling on occasion but just not as much. As a builder, the day never arrived when I said “Awesome, we are hanging drywall on the ceiling today”, whereas I was always happy when a client chose a tongue and groove wood ceiling.
The aesthetics of drywall compared to wood ceilings:
Clearly my bias has been established; I like wood ceilings. I find those moments when you are vacantly staring at a ceiling to be infinitely more interesting with tongue and groove wood than staring at a monotone eggshell-white surface - cold me old fashioned but I love the traditional look.
Painted ceilings are typically light in color, which can make a room feel larger than if the ceiling were painted a darker colour. Due to its typically darker shade, there is the potential for a wood ceiling to make a room feel slightly smaller than average, so the appeal may be reduced in smaller rooms. But that impact is hardly noticeable in an open-concept room with cathedral ceilings and lots of natural light.
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A modern light grained maple wood ceiling © Ecohome |
Installing wood on ceilings compared to drywall:
Drywall installation goes quicker than wood, or at least seems to at first, but that is only the first stage. You still need to mud the joints (three coats plus touch ups) then sand it, dust it, prime it and paint it. And you will have better luck finding a talking unicorn than a worker that says they enjoy mudding and sanding over their head.
Drywall is, however, the common ceiling material of choice in tract-home developments. With economies of scale and operating like an assembly line – the drywall crew rips through a house in maybe a day or two, then a separate crew does the mudding and sanding and a third crew comes in to paint; it is no doubt cheaper than wood.
With custom homes built by an independent contractor, drywall and mud is most often subbed out to a separate crew, as it is a very unique talent. Anyone can do a bad job at mudding, but you really need to immerse yourself in the craft to be fast and good at it. I’ve done some mudding in the past - usually in areas of little aesthetic importance - and just enough to suck at it. So I tip my hat to the mud artists who can make a wall smooth in three coats, whereas my four coats always left a wall looking like a failed attempt at stucco.
When you factor in the travel time of separate crews coming to a custom home rather than going door-to-door in a development, any monetary savings from choosing drywall over wood will probably become less noticeable, especially whenbuilding a certified Green Home环保墙。
Paint and finishes for drywall & wood ceilings:
You need to prime and paint drywall but you do not need to do anything with wood. Some people choose to stain or seal wood before installing it on a ceiling, but I’m not that guy. That means more materials, more labour and more fumes, and really for no tangible reason.
天花板上几乎没有紫外线照射,所以颜色变化很小,发生的速度也很慢。因为没人会碰它,所以你不需要洗它。也就是说,你不需要在木制天花板上涂油、污渍或任何类型的密封剂。有些人会,但那可能是一个更有光泽的外观或更丰富的颜色的选择。即使这样,它也只能减缓颜色的变化;it won’t stop it.
Typically, you would see an untreated pine ceiling turn a slightly darker shade of yellow over the years, but not nearly as much as you would notice with a floor, even a floor that has been treated with a varnish ornatural oil treatment for wood.
Varnished wood floors will show discolouration over even a couple of months between portions exposed and those covered by furniture or an area rug. Without direct sun exposure, a wood ceiling will age slowly and evenly.
14 year old timber frame with 1.5 inch pine boards as the finished ceiling, but also the floor above © Ecohome
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Air quality with a timber ceiling:
With wood:the onlyair quality issues inside a homewith untreated wood is the dust coming off the saw when it’s cut. But that is among the least of your respiratory concerns on a typical work site, and cutting can often be done outdoors to help keep the work space cleaner.
With drywall:Every piece of drywall you cut will generate a fine dust, but that pales in comparison to what you will generate when you are sanding drywall compound. It sucks for the person doing it, and for anyone stuck in the same space while it’s happening. Doing Mr. Miyagi’s ‘wax on, wax off’ training over your head for a day will make a Karate Kid out of anyone; short of that, there is nothing fun about it.
Cost comparison between wood and drywall:
Here is a general comparison (without tax and material delivery fees) between installing wood or drywall, based on 1,000 square feet of ceiling.Of course, this would vary depending on local material and labour costs, as well as ceiling height and complexity - so if you think my math is off, remember it’s a ballpark estimate.
根据我当地供应商的报价,一个松v型接头木天花板的材料成本约为1700美元(切割时考虑到5%的浪费),需要3名工人(一名切割工,两名安装工)大约1.5到2天才能完成。If you calculate that with a labour figure of $40 per hour, you’re looking at an approximate installed cost of$3,600.
Finishing a ceiling with drywall would cost about $500 in materials for drywall, tape and mud compound. It would take two workers between a half-day and a day to install the drywall, one worker 3 days to do 3 coats of mud, and 1 day of sanding. That’s a total of about $2,400 for material and labour, but you haven’t applied paint yet.
To do one coat of primer and two finishing coats you’d need 8 cans and it would easily take a day and a half with taping. At that same rate of $40 an hour and assuming $40 per can for a middle-of-the-road low-VOC paint, for a drywalled ceiling you’d be looking at an approximate installed cost of$3,200.这仅仅是400美元的差距,考虑到这只是一个估计,你安装任何一种材料的成本都可能在价格上发生很大的变化,使它们的价格几乎相同。
Wood v drywall ceilings, which is most eco-friendly?:
This depends on the origins of your particular material choice. If youchoose lightweight, recycled synthetic gypsum board, low-dust drywall compound andzero-VOC paints,你将保护工人和居住者的健康,与选择你能找到的最廉价的材料相比,它还会减少你的碳足迹和产生的污染。
Similar choices can be made with wood – you can use reclaimed barn boards, FSC-Certified lumber, or wood reclaimed from river bottoms as seen above. It will also reduce the negative health and ecological impacts of finishing with wood if you omit applying a finish.
One thing is for certain - when the work is complete, it will be quicker and easier to clean below a wood ceiling than one with drywall, mud sanding and painting.
Staining wood ceilings:
If you are interested in the look of wood but would like to mix up the look a bit, below are some examples of a ceiling with a dark stain, a lighter stain, and a white wash, which brightens the look of the wood but still lets the grain and character show through. Images courtesy of theWooden Shoe Timber Frame Company
Thanks for the great article. I plan to build a passive house and therefore want as much thermal mass as possible, so am considering using 5/8" drywall instead of standard 1/2". Would a pine ceiling (unfinished) make a significant diffence in thermal mass? I know the slab floor is doing the greatest amount of work in the thermal mass calculations,, so that may make the ceiling material irrelevant. I would appreciate your thoughts.
Hi Tom, glad you enjoyed the article, hope it helps. Thermal mass is great for balancing temperatures as you know, but compared to the impact a slab of concrete will have I don't imagine you will notice much difference (or any really) by altering the thickness of drywall or the difference between wood or drywall for ceilings for that matter.
我们很容易陷入游戏中,上帝知道我在很多场合甚至仍然这样做:)但有时我们在超级绿色住宅建设中采取的行动的影响只是在某种程度上娱乐我们自己!Don't take that the wrong way - build the most awesome airtight and well insulated house you can, and pop in thermal mass for sure, but any differences in benefit between wood and drywall would be so minimal that I would make your taste, sustainability of products and your budget as the main considerations.
大资料介绍了木质天花板或石膏板的成本比较如何选择。很有见地。
With the rising costs of lumber, are you seeing a rise in costs of plank ceiling materials as well?
Hi Tina, for sure there would be, from a manufacturing standpoint the cost of all wood products is noticeably higher at the moment. wood for ceilings and walls may be a different thickness that flooring, any a lot of times not even, so it would be similarly affected.
What about relative merits as an air barrier? We are planning to use drywall for walls and v-groove pine for ceiling in a new build (in eastern Ontario), but with all the concern about movement of moisture (especially with OSB sheathing topped with rigid foam insulation), I've been wondering if drywall for ceilings might be a safer option. . . .
Great, insightful article. I am in process of rebuilding cottage with a 4 season sunroom (with a woodstove). I am wondering if we need to drywall the ceiling before applying the pine to ceiling. Or, can we install pine without the drywall. What makes more sense? We are rookies at this.
Hi Sam, there's no reason to do both, wood is just an alternative to the drywall. Both are just an aesthic really, the necessary 'functional' components of the ceiling or walls are your thermal barrier, vapor barrier and air barrier. Drywall, or wood if that's what you are going with, just hides and potects them.
What if there is drywall installed already? The current sheet rock has seam tape loosening, but it's overall, pretty smooth and planed evenly. I would be installing wood ceiling on front porch ceiling, and sun room ceiling
Thanks for advice
嗨,兰迪,我想不出你为什么要拆掉石膏板除非你想要收回那半英寸的天花板高度,或者它会让你在十字路口打扫更加困难。离开它其实还有一点好处——你可以多保护一下你的空气/蒸汽屏障,尽管影响很小,但你日光房干墙的热质量会通过储存释放热量来帮助平衡温度。
I thought the same. Thank you
好文章!我住在一幢一层的原木房子里,隔墙是t&g,木地板是t&g,天花板是t&g。这所房子已经有25年的历史了。天花板的绝缘是克拉夫特面棉絮绝缘与另一个无面棉絮垂直于它。R48。我的问题是,这是一个足够的蒸汽屏障还是有发霉的风险?中西部寒冷的气候。我考虑过将绝缘拆除,并铺设一个空气屏障与适当的密封在渗透和沿边缘的板满足原木端墙。重做绝缘而不加面层。这样做明智吗?这会导致霉菌问题吗? T&g is not air tight like the drywall. I really don't want to pull down over 2000 sf of t&g and putting on drywall first. The home passed fire code at the time because the t&g was thick enough not like paneling. Any suggestions to decrease air flow and avoid mold? Any suggestions would be appreciated!