Decorating and Design - Need help with awkward slanted ceilings!

Hello! Our home is about 100 years old in a Lake community, and we have these lovely slanted ceilings on the 2nd floor (the house is an A-frame). The upstairs has 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, and I'm not really sure what to do with them! The walls start slanting at about 5 feet from the floor, and make wall decor very difficult, not to mention some furniture choices as well! I have a little set-back area in the guest room where the ceiling slants and the guest bed is nestled in. My problem is, what do I do with the slanted ceiling area OVER the bed? Framed wall art would be too low, I think, and it's a long area so I want to be sure I avoid over-cluttering it. Any thoughts??? I'm open to anything ... draperies, frames, etc. Oh yeah, and I have a palm tree/tropical theme in the upstairs. (I grew up in So. CA, I figure I'm entitled!) ;)

Any ideas would be appreciated! I'm having a hard time finding resources without going out and spending a fortune on an interior decorator! Thanks!

How about this? Find a book or calendar that's got tropical style pictures in it. Cut a bunch of them out, and frame them in small frames (you can purchase inexpensive wood frames almost anywhere)...then space them out along that wall? Very simple, yet interesting & ties in your theme without being too cluttered...

Carly: i think the problem is that the vertical part of the walls only go up to a 5-foot point, so that artwork is a bit low. but to hang artwork any higher would mean hanging it on the slanted part of the wall, which is almost more like a ceiling area, which might seem odd (although calendar pages & vacation postcards might be cute pinned up).

i wouldn't hang framed pictures on the slanted walls. but you could hang other "stuff" on them. like palm leaves or other fairly flat knickknacks (boat oars, nautical flags, beachy stuff, whatever....).

or, you could do an interesting paint treatment that would decorate the surface enough that you wouldn't need any additional wall decor - or use a fairly busy wallpaper (maybe a palm tree pattern, etc).

or you could drape flat panels of fabric from them, creating a sort of awning/canopy effect, over the bed area.

We have friends who have a lake house (cabin, really) where the bedrooms on the 2nd floor are much like you're describing. If they don't start slanting until 5 ft, you should have some space between the bed & slant, no? Anyway, the style of framed pictures I'm thinking of would work (they did at our friends place) in such a space, because they're small (maybe 8-10 inches square). And they don't have to be hung at a 'standard' picture height like you'd use in a living room.

But, anyway, there are plenty of cute little things you could hang on the walls, I just think you want to be careful of it getting to cutesy and/or cluttery looking!

Hi :) I grew up in a house with slanted ceilings in the upper bedrooms. Mom and I tried lots of things with those awkward spaces, but the one I liked best was moving the bed to the center of the room (my room ran the length of the house and had slanted ceilings on both ends). Laying under the lowest point at night made me really uncomfortable.

I placed my dresser against one wall with 3 smaller mirrors across the back, rather than using the tall mirror that came with the dresser. At one time, I also had a chair and ottoman on the other side of the room under the opposing slanted side.