Long post incoming……..

Thanks for the compliments. Here's some of my info/thoughts on porch ceilings (we just did a lot of thinking on this while building my house). We were trying to decide on what to put on our front and side porches along with our patio. We had initially planned on beaded hardie boards then went back and forth with t&g pine, then i thought about the fence board option. We went with fence boards on our back patio (stain & sealed with benjamin moore Arborcoat) and t&g pine on the front and side porch (“painted” with BM arboarcoat light blue). One thing to think about is wood grain won’t show bugs/dirtiness as much as light color painted.

Approx price/SF of a few options:
Cedar fence boards: $1.45
Pine T&G: $2.18
Cedar T&G: $4.22
Beaded Pine Plywood: $0.75
Beaded Hardie: $1.56

My pros & cons for each:
Cedar fence boards
P: look good (if you get good quality, not lowes), we preferred how cedar looked vs stained and sealed pine, easy to install (just butted together and face nailed with a finish nail gun)
C: takes some labor to plane them, need a benchtop planer

Pine T&G
P: look good installed, very clean finished look, not too expensive, reversible so beaded look as well
C: PAIN IN THE arse to install on a ceiling because the boards are never perfectly straight and you have to wedge them in, didn’t like how they looked stained. I’ll personally never install again, LOL!

Cedar T&G
P: Looks awesome
C: Cost$$ and installation issues similar to pine

Beaded Pine Plywood (installed this on my porch at old house):
P: Least costly
C: not uniform look (plywood isn’t perfect), didn’t like stained look of pine similar to t&g, big pieces would be awkward to install

Beaded hardie (installed this on a small porch on my old shed, not a big area):
P: durable, uniform look
C: Awkward/heavy to install plus hardie is prone to breaking if it bends (once installed, it's bulletproof). Need to use large head nails to suck it up to joists or decking (more putty/caulk work)

Someone mentioned “floating” smooth hardie. You’d have to use some sort of exterior compound plus I think you’d be dealing with cracking forever. One thing I’ve seen is someone installed full sheets of smooth hardie (or maybe beaded) then used 1x3’s as battens in a 4’x4’ pattern to cover the joints. Looked good and if you cut the sheets to 4x4, it would be easier to install.

We don’t have insulation above our patio currently but could add easily in the future.

Hope the info above helps.