Compare suspended and stretch ceiling

White­washed ceil­ings have long since sunk into obliv­ion, and wall­pa­per­ing is not rel­e­vant. Sus­pen­sion and ten­sion struc­tures are con­sid­ered a more prac­ti­cal, durable and styl­ish option. But which one is bet­ter? Our experts dealt with this issue.

Features of ceiling structures

Sus­pend­ed and ten­sion type struc­tures are used both as a dec­o­ra­tive coat­ing and for cov­er­ing the ceil­ing. The sim­i­lar­i­ty of both prod­ucts is that they allow you to avoid the mate­r­i­al-inten­sive and time-con­sum­ing process of lev­el­ing the work­ing sur­face. The instal­la­tion of a plas­ter­board and PVC ceil­ing is also a bit sim­i­lar: a spe­cial frame is used to install both of them, only the sus­pend­ed ceil­ing is sheathed with sheets of plas­ter­board, and PVC film is used for ten­sion.

In most cas­es, the struc­tures in ques­tion are only a dec­o­ra­tive ele­ment, but some­times it is sim­ply a neces­si­ty:

1. In Sovi­et high-rise build­ings and Khrushchevs, the height dif­fer­ence in res­i­den­tial build­ings of this type some­times reach­es sev­er­al cen­time­ters. Ordi­nary plas­ter is not enough to solve the prob­lem: it will take a lot of time, effort and a con­crete screed. Installing a sus­pend­ed or PVC ceil­ing is the sim­plest and best solu­tion.

2. To dec­o­rate a paint­ed sur­face — if it is planned to repair a room with a ceil­ing cov­ered with a water-based emul­sion (even in sev­er­al lay­ers), it is eas­i­er to install a sus­pend­ed / ten­sion struc­ture than to remove the paint.

3. When installing spot light­ing equip­ment — of course, it is prob­lem­at­ic to install spot light­ing with­out a dec­o­ra­tive ceil­ing — a plas­ter­board or PVC con­struc­tion will help cre­ate the light­ing of the required con­fig­u­ra­tion, and secure­ly hide all com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Compare stretch and suspended ceilings

It would seem that sim­i­lar prod­ucts, which nev­er­the­less have cer­tain dif­fer­ences between them. Let’s try to fig­ure out which ones.

Installation method and speed

Sus­pend­ed ceil­ing — the design is quite finicky — the instal­la­tion of such a prod­uct will require a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time and effort (espe­cial­ly dry­wall prod­ucts). Depend­ing on the com­plex­i­ty of the design and its size, the instal­la­tion process can take from sev­er­al days to sev­er­al weeks. But stretch fab­rics are mount­ed in just a few hours, and the amount of debris after is min­i­mal. The excep­tion is mul­ti-lev­el sys­tems with a lot of decor and the pres­ence of com­plex light­ing fix­tures.

Subtleties of care and damage

Ten­sile struc­tures are not afraid of expo­sure to mois­ture and var­i­ous con­t­a­m­i­nants, from which the ceil­ing sur­face can be cleaned with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty — you only need a damp cloth. But such a prod­uct is very sus­cep­ti­ble to phys­i­cal impact (espe­cial­ly from sharp objects). Sus­pend­ed ceil­ings are afraid of both mois­ture and dirt: if stains appear on the sur­face of the prod­uct, you only have to repaint it. But dry­wall con­struc­tions are quite resis­tant to light blows.

Temperature resistance

PVC is very sen­si­tive to high/low tem­per­a­tures. For exam­ple, if the ther­mome­ter shows 0 ⁰C, the sur­face of the stretch ceil­ing com­plete­ly los­es its elas­tic­i­ty — the prod­uct hard­ens and cracks. At high tem­per­a­tures (above +40 ⁰C) PVC soft­ens. There­fore, for premis­es locat­ed out­side the house or in harsh cli­mat­ic con­di­tions, PVC struc­tures are com­plete­ly unsuit­able.

Plas­ter­board sus­pend­ed ceil­ings feel quite nor­mal even with sig­nif­i­cant tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions, so the scope of such prod­ucts is much wider than that of stretch ones.

Lifetime

High-qual­i­ty stretch ceil­ing with care­ful oper­a­tion and prop­er care will last at least 15 years. It does not need restora­tion, does not change its char­ac­ter­is­tics and appear­ance dur­ing oper­a­tion. With hang­ing prod­ucts, every­thing is some­what more com­pli­cat­ed: they need to be updat­ed (with a fre­quen­cy of 2–3 years). In gen­er­al, such a prod­uct will last about 10 years.

Price

A square meter of false ceil­ing costs about $25–40, and if there are com­plex ele­ments and decor, the price increas­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly. The price of stretch ceil­ings fluc­tu­ates in a wide range — from 10 to 100 dol­lars per square meter. It all depends on the design fea­tures of the prod­uct, the pres­ence of dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments, pat­tern, tex­ture, shape of the can­vas.