7 Open-Concept, Vaulted-Ceiling Living Room Ideas for Your Home

Whether your dream home is a cozy cabin or a spacious Tudor, the drama and character of a vaulted ceiling can't be beat. The height makes any interior feel expansive and roomy, and the bold silhouette of a cathedral ceiling will take your breath away each time you see it. While you can have a vaulted ceiling in a smaller room, like a bedroom, an open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living room can elevate the style of any build.

Open-concept floor plans usually feature a unified great room that eliminates the walls traditionally separating a kitchen, dining room, and living room. These layouts can allow for more light and a sense of flow in your home. They can make a small home feel more spacious and flexible, and they can celebrate the features of a larger home and create a central space to gather.

However, designing and decorating rooms with high ceilings and open-concept floor plans can be a challenge. With so much space, homeowners sometimes struggle to find a focal point for the room or settle on a home decor style. We collected seven tried-and-true interior design tips for open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living rooms so you can take your home to new heights. 

Open-Concept, Vaulted-Ceiling Living Room Design Ideas 

Vaulted ceilings allow you to build or remodel a home that feels spacious and elegant without expanding your house's footprint. They also create opportunities for unique design touches that a low or flat ceiling may not support. 

Ceiling Design

Some of the most striking features of vaulted-ceiling living rooms are exposed beams. Whether you opt for dark wood beams or industrial black metal, they draw attention to the high ceilings of your living space. Ceiling beams can also create visual cohesion in a large room by matching the material to the floor or furniture. This adds structure to an open-concept living room without taking up space or making the living area feel smaller.

Rustic wood beams can add a farmhouse feel to a modern living room, while iron beams provide a contrast to a polished wood floor. Either of these ceiling ideas is sure to keep your eyes to the sky in your open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living room. 

Skylights and Picture Windows

House plans with open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living room designs should always feature many ways to fill the space with natural light. This amplifies the height of the ceilings while ensuring that the room feels airy and bright instead of cavernous and gloomy. Large windows and skylights are ideal for rooms with high ceilings, like DEN's Modern Alpine Cabin.

This 448-square-foot cabin shows that even a tiny house can feature an impressive vaulted ceiling. The rear wall can be made half or entirely of glass, depending on your design preference. Either arrangement will bring plenty of natural light into the vaulted-ceiling living room, which is enhanced by the skylight overhead.

Large windows and skylights keep the interior bright and allow you to appreciate the natural surroundings, whether you have an inspiring view to take in or you just want to admire the trees around you. 

Lofted Rooms

Vaulted ceilings are impressive from the ground up, but including a lofted bedroom or study creates another vantage point to enjoy an open-concept living room with a high ceiling. From a lofted room, you can look out over the living room and take in the view through the large windows. The loft also allows you to have private spaces for sleep or productivity in an otherwise open floor plan.

DEN's A-Frame House dedicates most of its square footage to the open-concept living room, dining room, and kitchen, but the lofted master bedroom provides a luxurious lookout through the floor-to-ceiling windows that bathe this vaulted ceiling home in natural light. 

Outdoor Spaces

Even though a vaulted ceiling is an indoor feature, house plans with outdoor spaces enhance the visual effects of the pitched roof. With a deck or patio beside it, your open-concept living room feels like it extends into the outdoors.

DEN's Outpost Plus allows you to admire the soaring ceilings and a completely unique silhouette from a spacious deck beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. This one-bedroom cabin also features a lofted bedroom that overlooks the open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living room and stunning natural light. 

Decorating Ideas for Open-Concept Vaulted Ceiling Living Rooms

Once you have your house plans in place, you can start thinking about how to decorate your open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living room. High ceilings offer a lot of potential for decoration, especially if you want to incorporate large or intricate pieces into your decor.

Also, with open floor plans, you can designate areas through furniture and decor and optimize the flow of your great room to best fit your lifestyle. Set up a dining area, or opt for an eat-in kitchen and create a reading nook or sitting area. These sections of your open-concept room can be easily blocked off with large furniture, bold colors, or detailed patterns without overwhelming the room.

Eye-Catching Light Fixtures

High-ceilinged rooms are perfect for statement-making light fixtures like large chandeliers. These bold lighting pieces make the overhead space of an open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living room interesting and warm. Depending on the style of your decor, your chandelier can add coziness, glamor, or drama to the room.

In a modern farmhouse style, go for a wagon wheel chandelier or one with lights styled to look like candles. With historical lavish decor, like French empire style, a crystal chandelier makes a fitting focal point. Even minimalist decor can be complemented by a sleek pendant light. 

Vibrant Textiles

One of the challenges to decorating open-concept homes is the lack of definition between different areas. Without walls, the living room can blend into the dining room or kitchen and create a sense of confusion or shapelessness. This is where textiles come into play.

Distinctive rugs or flooring can create the suggestion of rooms. Choose a pattern and color scheme for your living room and a different set for your dining room. These textiles will anchor your furniture to their different areas and make the space feel organized.

You can extend that organization with curtains that match each rug, instead of treating the windows as a separate unit from the living and dining rooms. 

Large Furniture

Whether you're drawn to minimalist decor or more elaborate furnishings, one of the perks of an open-concept, vaulted-ceiling living room is that you can bring in sizable pieces of furniture without making the space feel cramped.

Even in a small home, like DEN's Modern Loft Barnhouse, a large sectional sofa ensures that your living room will feel inviting and comfortable, while also giving you and your family or guests plenty of space to spread out. Keep the room open with just the sectional and some small end tables, or add more seating and a heftier coffee table for a cozier arrangement.

Statement pieces like stone fireplaces, china cabinets, and bookshelves are also common decorations in these large rooms. But while open-concept rooms can handle a lot of furnishing, you don't want to take up all of your floor space. If you're planning on a sectional or several pieces of seating, consider installing built-in bookshelves to give your walls a touch of variety without diminishing the space in the room. 

Design Your Open-Concept, Vaulted-Ceiling Home with DEN

An open-concept living room with a vaulted ceiling can be the showstopper of your house plans, if you know how to design and decorate the space. Structural features like lofted rooms, skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows, and outdoor areas will emphasize the high ceiling, while large furniture and prominent light fixtures are key design elements for these large rooms.

With DEN, you can create the perfect plans for your high-ceilinged home. Start by browsing our gallery and choose the houses closest to your vision for a more detailed look. From there, DEN is ready to help you customize your plans. Our house plan packages prep you to communicate easily and clearly with your builder and other necessary parties, and our resources can guide you through virtually every aspect of building your home. Let's get started!

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Resources:

• 75 Vaulted ceiling living room ideas you’ll love - December, 2023 | Houzz. (n.d.). https://www.houzz.com/photos/vaulted-ceiling-living-room-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_718~a_3405-20862
• Beck, A. (2023, May 23). These vaulted ceiling ideas create a dramatic living space. Better Homes & Gardens. https://www.bhg.com/vaulted-ceiling-ideas-7496690
• McGregor, H. (n.d.). Decorating with Vaulted Ceilings. https://redeuxdecor.com/decorating-with-vaulted-ceilings/
• Minton, M., & Alpert, Y. M. (2023b, October 18). Vaulted ceilings ideas that take rooms to new heights. Architectural Digest. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/vaulted-ceilings-renovating-ideas