Home Improvement Ideas: Wall Molding

A simple way to transform your walls without spending a big enough wad of cash to fit inside Paris Hilton’s empty head is to decorate with molding. Moldings are those pieces of wood that line the wall around the hip area and decorate up there in the crease where ceiling tongue-kisses wall. Step on the brakes of that particular housing love affair by introducing a third player into its erotic triangle. Okay, even I’m tired of carrying this home improvement metaphor any further now. The point is that with the judicious or even gauche use of molding, you can decorate a boring wall so that it becomes something you might expect to see in a house you have to pay admission to get into.

Panels

A different kind of molding design is the use of flat panels. Just about any wall can be decorated with wall panels to lend it a new architectural interest. Attach the panels from wall to ceiling and separate them with raised molding and you’ve now got a house that looks like it cost about 10,211 bucks more than it really did.

Decorative Chair Rail Molding

Chair molding gets its name from being located along the wall at roughly the height where a chair being backed up when you get out of it would hit the wall. Chair molding is a home improvement choice that is decorative as well as functional because it protects the wall against damage done from chairs being pushed back against it. When you got to the Home Depot or the Lowes store to shop for chair molding, be prepared for a difficult choice. Chair molding is available in a wide variety of styles. The aesthetic look of chair molding is known as its profile and you can spend a few days trying to pick the right chair molding profile.

Beveled Molding End Piece

Give your home’s wall molding a sense of style when you’ve got an end piece by beveling it against the end of the wall. This beveled look gives wall molding a finished look that can’t be copied by leaving it unbeveled.

Wainscoting

Adding wainscoting to your wall can really do a fashion number for your home improvement plans. Wainscoting can be applied in panels or tongue-and-groove boards and the treatments are versatile enough to fit the needs of just about any home interior design scheme. One way to utilized wainscoting is as a cap to that chair rail molding you just put up. Wainscoting can also go along the bottom of the wall where the wall cheats on the ceiling by blowing in the ear of the floor. To achieve a traditional and formal look, use three-quarter-height wainscoting and place a painting, poster or framed photographs above it.

Picture Molding

Speaking of framed artwork, you might want to consider upping the ante on your wall decorating plans by utilizing picture molding. Picture frame molding was specifically designed to allow the frames to hang on the wall without the need to damage old-style plaster walls. Picture molding doesn’t come in quite the variety that chair railing and wainscoting comes, but it can be used for much more than highlighting a work of art on the wall.