Don't Look Down: How To Maintain The Ceilings In Your Home

When you've sorted out all your rugs and walls, things can only start to look up. Ceiling maintenance is often overlooked, often with disastrous consequences. Small things add up, so the little things that you ignore can snowball and start to have devastating, sometimes deadly, effects all around your home, with symptoms that appear in your ceiling.

As with everything, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, so ceiling maintenance is just one part of keeping your home in a great condition - especially important when you thinking of selling and of ways of adding value to your home. If you're looking to spruce up or maintain your ceilings, here are some easy ways to go about it.

Ceiling Mouldings

A simple way to add a subtle flair to any home is to install ceiling mouldings. Homebuyers will notice obvious things like the number of bedrooms in a home, or how much natural lighting there is, but will also subconsciously register small things in making their decisions. Shift this to real estate surveyors, who regularly assess the values of homes, and you'll see that a simple thing such as ceiling mouldings will add much more value to your home.

Colour them up

A simple misconception for ceilings and mouldings is that they have to be the same colour as your walls. Think about your floor: does its colour have to match that of your walls? Of course not, so a great way to add some visual interest to your home is to paint the ceiling and mouldings a different colour. As long as you keep it simple and understated, there's no reason why a different coloured ceiling shouldn't be allowed - in fact, it is a faux pas of design to let them be the same colour in the first place.

Control Humidity

Now that you've got your mouldings installed and have coloured them differently from the walls, it's time to take care of your beautiful ceilings. Humidity is an oft overlooked factor, with effects that can be felt; stuffiness is one such symptom; however, there are more dangerous effects. Humidity can enrich the breeding ground of mould, which can show itself as an unsightly stain or, worse, as a toxin in the air that can cause respiratory problems. Being between walls or high up on ceilings will make mould treatment and removal that much more difficult. While this is something can spiral beyond anyone's control quite quickly and easily, the solution is quite simple: a dehumidifier will maintain healthy humidity levels that will not only clear up the air, but prevent any mould from growing in the first place. Enter any home and you'll immediately notice crisp air inside the homes, important aesthetically and practically.

Keep them squeaky clean

Depending on your choice of moulding and ceiling material, regular cleaning may be required. Dirt and bacteria can build up in more porous materials used in a home. Think of porous tiles and wooden mouldings and you're on the right track. Just grabbing a damp cloth and dabbing at these can help a lot in the long run - especially when you need to impress potential buyers at an open home!