Hacks to Get Past a Not-Square Ceiling
Installing a tin tile ceiling is the worst time to find out that your ceiling isn’t square. Or maybe you already know your ceilings aren’t square. Now what?
Most buildings have their quirks. It’s pretty difficult to get things perfectly level, plumb, and square. That gets complicated by settling and general earth movement and perfectly square becomes a distant dream.
The older the house, the more likely it is you’ll be dealing with not square ceilings. You can chalk it up to old house problems but what do you actually do about it? Square tin ceiling tiles on a not-square ceiling presents two problems:
- you might be left with small but odd shaped areas of the ceiling not being covered by tin
- you might end up with tin tiles veering off more on a diagonal than a straight line.
Luckily there are some things you can do about it. Here are a few ideas to hack your way to a beautiful installation, non-square ceilings and all.
Hack #1 Filler Panels
Another option to make up the difference when you end up with a gap is to use filler panel. Tin filler panel is additional tin tile you can use as a border around the outside of your tin ceiling. Filler patterns can easily hide any un-square issues because of the smaller and less distinct pattern on the filler tile.
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Hack #2 Trim
Trim around the perimeter is an excellent way to make up for non-square ceilings. Tin trims are essentially crown molding in metal. They finish a room nicely and leave no hint that anything is amiss.
Choose a highly ornamented and complementary molding, or go with something more simple and flat. Use larger crown molding for bigger gaps and smaller or flat moldings for slight gaps.
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Hack #3 Caulk
If the gap created by an un-square ceiling is very small, you can simply caulk the area. It will seal it up and fill the space, making it less noticeable. Choose caulk in a color that matches either your wall color or your tin tile color.
Caulk comes in a variety of colors, including silver, gold, copper, etc., which match tin tiles
Watch Out!
If your ceiling isn’t square, it’s because there’s an issue with your walls. This could impact the rest of the room and the house (unsquare ceilings in neighboring rooms, bowing walls, foundation issues, etc.).
Hack #4 Paint
Like caulk, paint is another option to visually fill in any gaps. Sometimes tricking the eyes is sufficient to make up for the lack of a square room.
The trickiest part about using paint is getting the right color. Try our touchup paints made to match our custom powder-coated finishes. Though it’s not available in every color, we cover the most popular colors and do it perfectly.
You can successfully install a tin ceiling regardless of the squareness of the ceiling. Want to see how other homeowners dealt with unsquare situations? Read on.
