Covering artex on ceilings

I've recently had a couple of artexed ceilings covered in a 1930's house.

I was advised against just skimming with plaster as it would add weight which the ceiling might not be able to take.

Instead the fitted some long bits of metal through the ceiling to the joists which they then screwed new plasterboard on to. The joins were taped & skimmed and all was good.


It also had the advantage that I was able to paint it the next day rather than wait for plaster to fully dry out.


I've lost about an inch in ceiling height (not noticeable) but had the advantage that the artex was barely touched.

It cost about 10% more than quotes I had to just do a skim coat.

An old plasterer once told me that when artex is originally plastered on to whatever surface, it never fully sets. And once made wet again, it will most likely delaminate.
So in theory, the wet plaster scimed on, may make the artex delaminate from whatever the artex is stuck to.
However the plasterer in question did scim over artex in the time I knew him.
As a builder myself, I would obviously recommend either removing the artex coating and then scim, or overboard the ceiling with new plasterboard and scim.
Or just get your plasterer to scim over your artex and take a chance that it will stick fine. Worst case scenario is you’ll have to pay to get it taken down again or just board over it.

On I side note, if it does contain asbestos, you will have to make a bit of where you covered up the asbestos for your notes when and if you sell your house.

Hope this helps a little.

You really have three options here:

1. Rip down the ceiling and start fresh - incredibly messy and not necessary unless your ceiling is badly damaged. You also need to consider possible asbestos contamination
2. cover with plasterboard and skim - you will be losing couple of cm of room height
3. skim over - we had that done recently, no problems at all

I would remove the existing ceiling boards and replace with new plasterboard before having that skimmed. That's what I've done (though in my case it's because the existing ceiling was fibreboard). Yes, it's a bit messy but so is skimming. Would much rather it was done properly without the risk of a bodge such as insufficient screws going through the old boards into the joists with overboarding. I've had old and poor condition plasterboard skimmed and found the result wasn't great and felt it would have been worth replacing.

The houses on the small estate where I live were built around 1965. All had swirly Artex ceilings, the majority of which have been skimmed over with plaster.