The Ceiling as Canvas: Kirkland’s Artful Library
A home library where the ceiling is the primary design surface — and every lighting decision serves it.
Most rooms are designed from the floor up. This library was designed from the ceiling down. The ceiling mural was the decision that determined the lighting, the furniture scale, the color palette, and the placement of every piece in the room.
The brief was a room that felt like a retreat — not a home office, not a reading nook, but a proper library with the atmosphere of a space that has existed for a long time and is worth staying in. The ceiling made that possible.
Designed from the Ceiling Down
The ceiling mural references European ballroom frescoes — angels in expressive, bold brushwork, dramatic in composition and warm in color. The mural is backlit with soft embedded lighting at the drop ceiling perimeter, which means the painting is vivid in the evening without a direct overhead fixture washing the surface flat.
Five-foot sculptural sconces flank the walls at a scale that makes them design objects in their own right. Four golden semi-flush tube pendants provide a secondary lighting layer that connects the warm gold tones of the sconces to the ceiling mural above them. The rolling library ladder adds vertical movement and is both functional and compositional.
The Work Begins With One Conversation
We hold a limited number of consultations each month and are selective about the projects we take on. If you’re ready to discuss yours, we’d like to hear about it.
The mural is backlit from the drop ceiling perimeter — the light source is invisible, the fresco appears to glow from within.
The Challenge Was the Ceiling Itself
A home library without a compelling overhead element is a room with bookshelves. The ceiling is the one surface visible from every seated position — in a room built for extended time in a chair, what’s above you matters more than designers usually give it credit for.
The challenge was executing a ceiling mural that read as a genuine design decision rather than a decorative flourish. It needed to be anchored in craft, large enough in scale to hold the room, and lit in a way that performed at night as well as it did in daylight.
“The ceiling was the decision. Everything else in the room serves it.”
How We Made It Work at Night
Lighting a ceiling mural is a different problem than lighting a room. Direct overhead fixtures wash a painted surface flat — the texture disappears and the mural reads as wallpaper. Perimeter backlighting at the drop ceiling edge solves this. The light grazes the painted surface, revealing brushwork and depth. The source is hidden. The mural appears to be illuminated from within.
The five-foot sculptural sconces were specified at that scale intentionally. At a smaller size, they would read as accent lighting. At five feet, they are design objects that anchor the vertical space between the bookshelves and the mural and hold their own from across the room.
The mirror-inset coffee table was specified for one purpose: to reflect the ceiling mural from the seated position. Looking down at the table surface, you see the fresco. The room is designed to be experienced from every angle — not just the one the architect intended.
Frequently Asked
The work in this portfolio is the standard we hold ourselves to on every project — not just the celebrated ones. We take on a limited number of engagements each year, which means the projects we commit to receive our full attention from the first conversation through the final installation. If you’re considering a renovation, a new build, or a full redesign, tell us about your home. We’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right fit — and what working together would look like.
Your home should stop you. Every time you walk in.
