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A ceiling is the overhead surface or surfaces covering a room, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are widely utilized to cover floor and roof construction. They have been favourite areas for decoration from the earliest times: either by coating the flat surface, in emphasizing the structural members of roof or floor, or by commandeering it as a surface for an allover pattern of relief.

Not much is understood of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were richly designed with relief and painting, as is evidenced by the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. In the Gothic period, the normal tendency to utilize structural aspects decoratively then came to the creation of the beamed ceiling, for which large cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being thickly chamfered and molded and generally painted in attractive colours.

During the Renaissance, ceiling design was moved to its highest peak of uniqueness and difference. Three forms were further elaborated. The first was the coffered ceiling, in the delicate design of which the Italian Renaissance architects far outdid their Roman prototypes. Circular, square, octagonal, and L-shaped coffers were produced, with their edges ornately carved and the field of each coffer flourished with a rosette. The second kind consisted of ceilings largely or partially vaulted, usually with arched intersections, with painted bands foregrounding the architectural design and with pictures covering the remainder of the area. The loggia of the Farnesina villa in Rome, decorated by Raphael and Giulio Romano, is a prime illustration of this. During the Baroque period, fantastic figures in heavy relief, scrolls, cartouches, and garlands were also brought in to decorate ceilings of this kind. The Pitti Palace in Florence and many French ceilings in the Louis XIV style showcase this. In the third kind, which was notably coined of Venice, the ceiling became one sizeable framed image, like in the Doges’ Palace.

In contemporary architecture ceilings often are split into two major classes — the suspended (or hung) ceiling and the exposed ceiling. With ceilings hung at a distance under the structural members, some architects have sought to hide large amounts of mechanical and electrical equipment, such as electrical conduits, air-conditioning ducts, water pipes, sewage lines, and lighting fixtures. The large part of suspended ceilings use a lightweight metal grid suspended from the structure by wires or rods to support plasterboard sheets or acoustical tiles.

Other architects, emphasizing the aesthetic of the exposed structural system, delight in exposing the mechanical and electrical equipment. From this design, many structural systems have been created that have a deliberately expressive power in themselves and make for desirable ceilings.

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