Getting Rid of Popcorn Ceilings - Market Ready Q. Should we redo our popcorn ceilings with a smooth finish before trying to sell our home? A. Unless you're targeting buyers who want a retro look, a textured popcorn ceiling treatment probably isn't a selling feature. "I don't think people call their broker and say they're looking for a two-bed, two-bath, Upper East Side doorman building with a renovated kitchen - and by the way, the apartment has to have popcorn ceilings," said Michael Signet, director of sales at Bond New York. The vast majority of today's buyers, he said, view popcorn ceilings as a negative. "When you first walk into an apartment, it's something that definitely affects first impressions," Mr. Signet said, because the ceiling treatment is dated. It means work, and that there's a renovation that needs to be done. If there's a popcorn ceiling, there's probably also a kitchen from the "80s." For that reason, Mr. Signet said, refinishing a textured ceiling is typically among his first suggestions for sellers. It can be disruptive and messy, he conceded, but it's work that is likely to pay off in terms of better offers from buyers. From a buyer's perspective, he added, "If I know that if I need to put $1,000 of work into the apartment, I'm going to reduce my offering price by $3,000, because I want to get compensated for the time and effort I have to put in." Michael Russo, owner of the Manhattan design and construction company Porter Stable, agreed that it can be a messy job. The best way to remove a popcorn finish, he said, is simply "scraping with a Spackle knife," while catching the debris on a tarp. "You can't just put a smooth skim coat right over" the textured finish, he said, "because the weight would pull it down." After the popcorn is gone, Mr. Russo applies a skim coat of plaster, followed by primer and paint, to create a smooth uniform finish. For a 300-square-foot room, he estimated the job would cost about $800. One potential concern is that asbestos may be present (its use in textured ceiling treatments was banned in 1977). To find out if it's in your ceiling finish, you can get the ceiling tested by a professional or submit a small sample to a laboratory (a listing of accredited labs is at ts.nist.gov/standards/scopes/programs.htm). If asbestos is present, Mr. Russo said, his preferred fix would be to leave the popcorn finish undisturbed and cover it with a layer of drywall. While having this kind of work done can be inconvenient, it can go a long way toward making your home appear more appealing, Mr. Signet noted. "Sellers always overestimate the aesthetic beauty of their own home," he said. Many people who tell us that they have a beautifully renovated home - well, it was beautifully renovated in 1986. That doesn't match what people want today.