Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic At the end of last year, a six-bedroom house in Cobham, Surrey, came up for sale at £6.5mn. Built recently by the owner, it had a standout feature: a kitchen with a triple-height ceiling of more than 7.5m and full-length windows looking on to the garden. Three buyers fought a bidding war until it sold for £7.25mn.One of the bidders was a client of Jason Corbett, owner of Rowallan Buying Agents. “When the price went over £7mn, I advised him to stop as he would have ended up paying way over the odds for that house,” he says. “I can see why he fell in love with it, though: those high ceilings were stunning even though I have no idea how one would clean cobwebs off the top.”High ceilings hark back to an era of glamour and grandeur — the Regency elegance of Bridgerton, or the decadent English country house of Saltburn. They evoke the world’s finest historic architecture, from the Sistine Chapel to the Palace of Versailles. They can also boost the desirability, and price, of a home.The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) recently lauded high-ceilinged projects including a farmworker’s house in Cornwall and London’s Battersea Power Station at the RIBA Regional Awards 2024. “High ceilings create an immediate sense of openness and aesthetic pleasure, enhancing the building’s facade,” says Muyiwa Oki, RIBA president.Yet they continue to be the exception. There is no legally enforced minimum ceiling height for new homes in Britain, but national standards state that 75 per cent of gross liveable floor area should be more than 2.3m from floor to ceiling, rising to 2.5m in London.Given that homes with higher ceilings cost more to build, Paul Testa, director of HEM Architects and an expert for the Homebuilding & Renovating Show, says most developers settle on 2.4m, a height dictated by the standard size of materials such as plasterboard — any taller and they would need to use more expensive, often bespoke, formats. “The cost differences aren’t huge, but when you’re applying this against a build portfolio of hundreds or thousands of homes a year, they can make a big impact,” he says.At the Bryanston Hyde Park, designed by the late architect Rafael Viñoly, all 54 residences feature ceiling heights of 3m, while the entrance of the Townhouse, the duplex on sale for £132mn, reaches 6.5m — designed, according to the developer Almacantar, to create a sense of drama upon arrival and to emulate the great British houses.Some projects aim to evoke the grandeur of public buildings. In Surrey, ADAM Architecture recently completed a classical-style indoor swimming pool with a ceiling height of more than 10m, conjuring “the sense of generosity that one might typically find in chapels and assembly rooms”, says George Saumarez Smith, the practice’s design director.Until the 17th century, ceilings in cottages could be less than 2m high but, after the Great Fire of London in 1666, legislation culminated in the Building Act 1774, which addressed ceiling height. Houses were also categorised by size into seven rates, with a first-rate town house the grandest. According to Melanie Backe-Hansen, historian and co-author of A House Through Time, the first floor of a house like this was for entertaining and impressing, and had the highest ceilings — starting at 3.2m — and taller windows.The definitions soon spread from Georgian London into houses built across the country during the 18th and 19th centuries. “This created the precedent for the larger, more valuable homes with high ceilings — plus large rooms and decorative details — to become the definition of luxury and prestige,” Backe-Hansen says.The first floor still has cachet today, particularly in the most desirable addresses. Will Watson, head of property finder The Buying Solution, says that, in Belgravia’s Eaton Square, first-floor apartments command a premium of 20 per cent or more. Becky Fatemi, partner at Sotheby’s International Realty, agrees. “American buyers especially love the allure of London’s grand high ceilings, and the feeling of space they give,” she says.In New York, prewar buildings tended to have 9ft (2.75m) ceilings but, later, most were built at 8ft (2.44m) to be more affordable, explains Richard Lambeck, adjunct associate professor at the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University.Nevertheless, despite the higher costs — and, Lambeck adds, potentially losing a whole floor of a building — developers of premium new homes are pushing for higher ceilings, especially in super-skinny skyscrapers. These are built in New York because it’s one of the only places in the world where the air is more valuable than the ground — land is at a premium and developers can buy unused “air rights” from lower buildings next to their plots to build higher.The world’s narrowest residential skyscraper, 111 West 57th Street, has ceilings of 4.3m; Edo Mapelli Mozzi, founder of Banda Property, who designed a penthouse on its 76th floor, says: “Working in denser cities such as New York has highlighted how high ceilings are even more valuable as they have the ability to make a space feel less hemmed in.”High ceilings are the ultimate bragging rightFredrik Eklund, of the Eklund Gomes team at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, says “12.3ft [3.75m] is the new luxury ceiling height”. Citing the duplex penthouse at Central Park Tower, the tallest residential building in the world, which has just closed at $115mn, “That property had the ultimate master-of-the-universe ceilings of over 30ft [9.1m],” he says. “You can change everything in an apartment or house, including finishes and even windows, but you can’t change ceiling heights. High ceilings are the ultimate bragging right.”Homes with high ceilings also have a certain je ne sais quoi in Paris, which has long fought to remain a low-rise city. While the La Défense business district has a number of skyscrapers and there are taller residential tower blocks in the 13th and 15th arrondissements, the centre is still largely free of tall buildings. Last year the city adopted a Plan Local d’Urbanisme, which limits the height of new buildings to 12 storeys, or 37m.Many clients of Tim Swannie, director of the luxury buying agency Home Hunts, seek out Haussmannian buildings, where the grandest apartments were built on the second floor, which has the highest ceilings of any level — usually at least 3.2m — and the most ornate interiors. “We have buyers who won’t visit a property unless the minimum ceiling height is 3m, ideally 3.5m in the reception rooms,” says Roddy Aris, Paris partner at Knight Frank estate agency.While homes with high ceilings cost more to heat, for their devotees, they are hard to beat. Lady Carnarvon has, since 2001, lived with her husband and son at Highclere Castle, in Hampshire, famous as the fictional Downton Abbey. Of the hundreds of rooms at the Grade I-listed stately home, the highest is the saloon, with 15m vaulted ceilings. “Walk into a tall room and you pause and look around — they even make you smile,” she says.However, she acknowledges that the extreme height of her saloon has its drawbacks. “Changing lightbulbs involves a cherry picker.”Find out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
