Using Smaller Sheets of Drywall Versus Full Height

Question

This question came up due to a project I'm working on and it got me thinking, what's the point of using taller sheets of drywall.

I think this is a newer phenomenon since for a long time many homes had 8 feet tall interior ceilings, and any vaulted room likely was custom enough to not have a standard size of drywall. Nowadays, it's quite common to have 9 and 10 feet tall interior rooms. So I wondered how common 9 and 10 foot drywall are.

The reasons I can see going for 9/10 foot drywall if you have a 9/10 foot interior are:

• Less taping
• Less cutting
• Faster (probably really just because of the prior 2 points)

Reasons I can see with going for 8 foot drywall even if you have taller ceilings are:

• Lighter and easier to work with
• More availability/Cheaper

Are there pros/cons I'm not thinking of? I would imagine both would come out looking the same, because if you're not good at taping and floating, it's going to show up in either case (unless horizontal seams show up worse).

One reason I ask, is because if you already have one height, I'm trying to justify if the pros of the other height are worth switching to.

Answer 1

It will save time, but not a ton of it. I'd count the space retrieved in the garage and the money not spent on new 10 ft (which can sometimes be difficult to maneuver into the room, depending on the access path) as a win .vs. a little more time finishing.

Answer 2

Not sure if this is what you were already thinking and this is what you mean by floating it: you could hang the 4x8 sheets horizontally and cut some length-wise to make up the 2 feet at the bottom. So it would look like this.

____________________
|       |        |
|_______|________|__
    |        |      
____|________|______
|_______|________|__

All the horizontal joints are tapered joints and the vertical joints are butt joints. The butt joints can land on studs or you could use a drywall joint backer. They sell them, like this one, but they're pretty easy to make yourself. Using the backer will recess the butt joints making them easier to get flat.

Sorry if I'm telling you something you already know.

Answer 3

I'm adding another answer because you changed the question a fair amount. This is largely based on my impression but I haven't been hanging drywall for 30 years. More experienced people will correct me.

Drywall sheets in residential construction are usually hung horizontally. If you look up photos of people hanging drywall they'll show the pattern I gave in my other answer (except they'll probably put a full sheet at the top, that was me thinking backwards (fixed in other answer)). I get the sense that vertical hanging is largely a commercial thing. 4x8 sheets are advantageous for a number of reasons:

• Smaller means lighter and easier to carry by hand
• 8' sheets fit nicely in a 6' truck bed with the gate down
• Smaller means easier to maneuver in tight spaces like around hallways
• 16" divides into 4 feet nicely so hanging horizontally you end up with both ends on a stud (in an ideal world anyway). If you do that with 10' sheets, one or both ends will float, and 12' are getting really big.

So the longer panels like 10' or 12' are actually for covering more span of wall per 1 sheet and having fewer butt joints. To cover height with fewer sheets, they actually go the other way and make wider 54" sheets so you can span a 9' tall wall floor to ceiling with 2 sheets.