BOHGUN RENOVATION Ceiling, the overhead surface or surfaces covering a room, and the underside of a floor or a roof. Ceilings are often used to hide floor and roof construction. They have been favourite places for decoration from the earliest times: either by painting the flat surface, by emphasizing the structural members of roof or floor, or by treating it as a field for an overall pattern of relief. Little is known of ancient Greek ceilings, but Roman ceilings were rich with relief and painting, as is evidenced by the vault soffits of Pompeian baths. During the Gothic period, the general tendency to use structural elements decoratively led to the development of the beamed ceiling, in which large cross-girders support smaller floor beams at right angles to them, beams and girders being richly chamfered and molded and often painted in bright colours.