black ceilings in bakery

[sugarseattle]

Getting ready to paint our bakery space and considering colors.

The space is about 900sf and will have an open kitchen. The ceilings are 15' tall. Nice old building.

The walls will be subtle pink on pink stripes similar to my logo. To counteract that girliness, I'm considering gloss black ceilings. I like the idea of the ceilings almost being reflective, but I'm concerned about flour dust.

Do you think I should put some sort of texture to mask any flour dust?

I will have a couple of ceiling fans, which I'll also paint black.

White could work, but I also hate when white gets dingy, plus it might be too girly.

[Toliver]

Adding texture may hide the flour dust but it'll also hold onto it, wouldn't it? At least a non-textured ceiling would be easier to clean if you had to do that.

Too bad they don't make flour dust-colored paint.

[baroness]

What about charcoal gray (less contrast to show flour) or bittersweet chocolate brown (a luscious food color) rather than plain old black?

Another idea is to spatter-paint the dark color with a lighter one...

[JeanneCake]

I like the chocolate brown idea.

[rooftop1000]

Pink and Brown is like so last year....but I do like it

T

[docsconz]

What would a black ceiling do to the temperature of the space considering that it is a bakery with ovens and such?

[hathor]

Are there any local health or restaurant code requirements that you should be aware of? I only ask because in our kitchen we are required to keep all surfaces white. We wanted to paint a broad red stripe on a part of the wall that is 30 feet above our heads and we can't do it.

[sugarseattle]

there doesn't seem to be any restrictions on paint color, only that surfaces need to be easy to clean.

[rooftop1000]

My last job was part of the team building a corporate cafeteria in NJ and a new requirement in town was a 24 inch band of white tile around the edge of any storage areas....so you see the cooties

the ceiling was dark grey for the record

T

[FlourPower]

I think it's a great idea. As for the dust, you'll get much more of it on the fans than you will on the ceiling itself.

[Preserver]

black ceiling and white flour... you'd have a ceiling that would turn grey hehehe but black would absorb heat from oven and will raise the temp in your kitchen, not to mention that it might be a fire hazard although it's far fetched, but something to consider.. health department might have something to say about it cos they can't see how clean/dirty your ceiling's are..

[chickie]

I like the spatter idea

It has been a long time since science class, but I do not think a black ceiling would be affected by oven heat, it is light heat/energy that gets black items hot.

[Melanger]

You might want to check with your local health and fire department. There are generally regulations regarding what type of paint or ceiling tiles for that matter, can be use in food production facilities. What is on the ceiling can theoretically get into the food so in Las Vegas for instance, there are regulations specifying what type of tiles you can use in a suspended ceiling.

We can use the hard, dense plastic coated cement board tiles, but we cannot use the more porous looking office ceiling type tiles. The cement based ones are fire rated (not sure for how many hours) for a longer amount of time wheras the more porous ones have a lower rating. This can really be a serious concern. We just had one of the larger commercial bakeries in town burn down last summer because the fire got up into the ceiling above the sprinklers and couldn't be put out in time to save the building.

Looks are great but safety is better!

[sugarseattle]

the ceilings are 14.5 feet up (16 feet up in some parts) so i don't think they'll make the kitchen hotter. health dept only specifies that surfaces are easy to clean, so color isn't part of that. Just like they don't have a specific measurement for how high a sneeze guard should be, only that it is "sufficient" to prevent food from public contact.

after looking at other places, I think the color is going to work out just fine. what i have noticed, is flour dust and such collects on light fixtures bigtime, so I'm going to make sure those are easy to clean!