I want to drop the ceiling in the entrance over the stairwell of this fairly old house–what would now be called a split-level, I think–in order to put insulation where there has never been any.

I’d like to blow in about R50 worth of cellulose. As you can see in the first pic (top of the stairs) there’s no room to do this and I’m pretty much resigned to using 4 inches of pink foam here, and possibly part way down the stairs. There is room for R50 in most of the rest of the space and my question is how to handle that?

Option 1: If I drop the ceiling 14 inches or so over the stairs going down (right half of pic) that ceiling will be 6 or so inches below the top of the door at the top of the stairs. That will look pretty funky I’d guess?

Option 2: I could extend the ceiling below where the pink foam will be, directly across (level) to the far wall. Since the roof is rising in that direction (may be hard to tell from pic) that will gradually increase amount of insulation possible, but overall won’t be very good.

Option 3: If I remove the current stair rail (needs redone anyway) I could replace it with a wall. This would allow each stair to have its ‘own’ ceiling. Only drawback to this I see is that it removes much of the spaciousness feeling of this open space.

Option 4: ??

Hope this us understandable. Hard to get far enough back to get pics that would make it easier to visualize.

Thanks!