Moldings On Walls

Any home can be enriched by the installation of decorative moldings on walls. Newly constructed homes usually have a simple baseboard molding along the floor and narrow casings around the windows and doors.

Older homes often can be found with wider decorative moldings and this gives these homes real character. You'll be amazed how a home can look more luxurious with the simple addition of wider casings, deeper baseboards, crown moldings, and a chair rail.

Consider the style of your home.

Choose molding styles to coordinate with the style of your home. You may love deep crown moulding and a center medallion on the ceiling, but this would probably not work in a contemporary or ranch style home.

A modern home should have plain moldings on walls, with little detailing. Traditional homes look wonderful with deep baseboards and wide casings. Elegant period-style homes are enhanced with very detailed decorative moldings.

Beadboard Backdrop

You can add interest to a wall with beadboard. And you can do it at a fraction of the cost of more formal wall paneling. Here's how to get a look like that in the photo above.

Cut 22 5/8-inch squares from a sheet of beaded board on the diagonal. Also, cut 2-inch horizontal and vertical moldings to fit the wall.

Apply the beaded board to the wall, carefully matching the beads along the edges and nailing every few inches. Nail molding strips around the perimeter of the wall and between the squares to cover the beadboard edges.

When all the pieces are in place, paint the wall. Beginners should take note that this project requires a lot of measuring and cutting.

The wainscot, which is the space generally below a chair rail, is often covered in decorative paneling, but a wall can be embellished with applied wood moldings as well, for a paneled look at a fraction of the cost. This involves applying small strips of decorative molding to create separate sections on the wall.

To Protect The Wall

Further up the wall, one might install a chair rail. It is usually about 3 feet off the ground, but a chair rail can be as high as five feet. The functional purpose of a chair rail is to protect the walls from chairs being pushed up against them.

We generally see chair rails in dining rooms for this purpose. As with the wall space below the chair rail, one might see decorative molding applied to the wall above the chair rail as well.

Similarly, faux wood panels can be created with applied molding to create boxes, or sections, in the wall. This adds character and formality to a plain wall.

At The Ceiling

At the top of the wall is the crown molding, which, like baseboard, is a connecting point between the wall and another surface: in this case, the ceiling.

It's usually the crown molding that gets the most attention in a space, and it can be a simple quarter-round piece or an ornate 18-inch construction of different styles, including dentil, egg and dart, and picture rail.

Hanging Artwork

Picture rail moldings are the most practical type of decorative molding. Their function is to hold a hook from which art and/or mirrors can be hung without having to hammer nails or brackets into the wall; this is particularly useful on plaster walls.

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