Reading material you need to know about crown molding, baseboards, window sills, and all kinds of trim!

Interior Trim - Changing the interior look completely

Some of the most visible details are in the interior trim work. There are many different ways that decorative pieces of wood can be attached to walls.

Knowing some of the terms and definitions can help home buyers determine what to ask about when purchasing a home or having one built - or what they can do to change and improve an existing home. Interior trim, or molding (sometimes referred to as moulding) can help define a room and give it personality.

Baseboards

This is the simplest and most commonly found trim work. Installed at the bottom of the wall against the flooring, baseboards cover natural gaps between flooring and walls, especially in areas with hard flooring such as vinyl, hardwood or tile.

Baseboards can be as short as 1" or as high as 7". The top of the baseboard can be slightly rounded, or can be shaped to varying degrees. A production builder may commonly use 3" baseboard. Custom builders often use 5" or 7", depending on the price point of the home. 

There can also be a secondary piece of trim called "base shoe" (which looks like a long pole split into quarters) against the floor to add another design element and create an even more polished look.

Casing

Casing is molding trim around windows and doorways. Typical casings are 1" to 4" wide. Most homes only have casings around windows on the first floor - on the second floor, the windows are carefully sheet rocked and painted just like any other wall corners.

Window sills can have casing on the front and a painted surface, casing and a wood window sill, or no casing at all.

Any doorway with a door generally has casing to cover the natural gaps between the door frame and the wall.

Casing can also be used to trim around an opening between two rooms, but this is for decorative purposes, and not normally required. 

Crown Molding

Crown molding is placed around the upper edges of a room's walls. Not all homes have crown molding. Some have crown molding in only a few rooms, while others have it throughout the first floor of a two-story home.

Crown molding varies in depth and thickness. Custom builders can use 1, 2, 3 or even 4 separate pieces to compose a crown molding, depending on the price point of the home.

Typical molding is 3", but homes at the upper echelon of the housing spectrum can have up to 15 or 20" crown molding.

Chair Railing

A chair railing is a piece of trim placed across the center of a wall, approximately 30" from the floor (at about the height of a chair.) In the past, this was installed in dining rooms to protect walls from chairs, hence the name. Now it is mainly used for decorative purposes.

When chosen, it is typically found in one or two select rooms, like a formal dining room, a formal living room, or a hallway. Chair rail allows more dramatic paint choices, as it divides the walls into an upper and lower portion. The choice to include chair railing, and the width and detail, depends on the budget of the buyer.

Wainscoting

This form of interior trim is growing in popularity as an extra touch. When present, it is often found in only one room, such as the formal dining room, or a sitting room, or even a bathroom.

Wainscoting is a type of paneling, which generally extends from the baseboard to the chair rail.

The paneling can be in sections as small as a few inches or as large as several feet with decorative scrollwork or designs.

The paneling and attached baseboard and chair rail is often painted white. There is a very dramatic and rich effect from the use of trim above and below the panels themselves, plus the contrast between the color of the walls and the color of the paneling and trim work.

Trim & Moulding Size Guide 

I’ve been getting a lot of questions recently on what size moulding to install. Don’t take this guide as an absolute, many times we go against the recommended sizes for drama and it looks fantastic.  But this can be used as general advice. And do not forget to check out the PROFILE GUIDE !!!!

	Ceiling Height
Moulding Size	6′	9′	10′	11′	12′ or more
Casing 2 1/4"	x
Base 3 1/4"	x
Crown 3 5/8"	x
Casing 2 1/4" – 3 1/4"		x	x
Base 4 1/4" to 5 1/4"		x	x
Crown 4 1/4" to 5 1/4"		x	x
Casing 3 1/4" to 3 1/2"				x	x
Base 5 1/4" to 7 1/4"				x
Crown 4 5/8" to 6"				x
Casing 3 1/4" to 3 1/2"					x
Base 7 1/4" or more					x
Crown 7" or more					x

or the general rule of thumb is

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In a Nut Shell

 

Wainscoting, Chair Rails and Paint 

Looking for chair rail ideas well “what is the proper chair rail height?”. The best height is around 30″ – 34″ above the floor for most rooms, but that there isn’t a widely accepted “correct” height. But what if you put it higher? What if you move way up the wall, say to 60″ – 64″ off the floor? You can see the effects in the pictures below.

 

 

Above, we have a standard room. It has a couple of nice features already with some hardwood floors and a pair of French doors. 

This room has 8′ ceilings. If you have higher ceilings you might raise the chair a little bit, but not much. You can see the different effects created by adjusting the height of the wainscoting, the width of the chair rail and adding crown. 

Add some color! Nothing sets off a design like white painted chair rail moulding against a nice deep wall color. 

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Tips 

 

Crown molding will look beautiful on 8′ ceilings, as long as you use smaller trim.  Nothing taller than about 6″, preferably 4″ will add luxury to the room.  Another factor might be room size – if your room is too small, then the molding may make the room feel crowded.  Our recommendation is to stay away from crown molding in a room with an 8′ ceiling that is about the size of a powder room, or smaller.

Pick the right size

Crown Molding has to be sized according the the volume of the room to work well. Too small and it will seem insignificant and look out of place, too large and it will make the room itself seem small and just be overpowering. There is a right size for every room.

Ceiling height is the first consideration. If your ceilings are at 8 feet above the floor, then you shouldn’t go with a huge molding. If your ceilings are 20′ in the air, on the other hand, then it wouldn’t do much good to put a small molding because nobody will be able to see it!.

What materials are best?

Stain Grade vs Paint Grade..

Stain Grade

If the trim is to be finished in such a way as to show the wood grain, either with a totally clear finish or with a stain, you generally want to use lengths of solid wood. This minimizes seams and keeps the color uniform such as Oak, Maple, Poplar, etc.

Stain grade material is generally considerably more costly so if you plan to paint, you don’t need solid wood.

Paint grade

Paint grade used to mean “finger jointed”. If you’ve ever seen a piece of trim broken and seen those little “teeth” looking grooves where it broke, that is a finger joint. The process allows manufacturers to use shorter lengths of lumber to make long pieces of trim.

MDF

MDF - Medium Density Fiberboard is often used for trim because of how well it can be milled with intricate profiles. Manufacturer’s can offer trim details that used to cost much more, now for an “entry level” price.

MDF is generally fine, but it does have some drawbacks, especially for baseboard. That major one is that MDF and water don’t mix! MDF is very readily damaged if it gets wet.

Being on the floor, baseboard is more likely than other trim to get wet, so keep that in mind. The other drawback to MDF is that it is a little bit harder to work with. Simple fixes of goofs such as a little sanding or a little putty or caulking, don’t seem to do as well on MDF.

The bottom line is that while MDF is great, I would suggest that you buy real wood if it’s available in the profile you want to use.

What is Shoe Molding?

Shoe Molding is the small piece of trim at the junction between baseboard and floor. Not all homes have it and it’s often not used where carpet is the floor covering.

Shoe Molding is great for covering gaps between hard surface floors and the baseboard. These gaps are often a necessary evil in flooring installation and the shoe molding covers them. It’s also useful for protecting the baseboard from damage, by, you guessed it, shoes.