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Redesigning your home can be a stressful event—and so can choosing your trim. There are so many factors to pick an appropriate moulding for your home that you might get overwhelmed thinking about all the options, like which wood species is best, how big should it be, where should I put the moulding?
Then, after you’ve settled on a material, size, type, and placement for your trim, the pressure doesn’t stop there. What color should the trim be? Should you go neutral, or is dark trim on light walls what’s right for you?
These are no small questions when knowing that the wrong decision can ruin the desired ambiance of your home. Too dark in the wrong room, and the room will feel constricting. Too much light in other rooms can also have adverse effects, clashing with the décor. Using over 50 years of experience, The Moulding Company walks you through how to make some of these crucial decisions.
What Trim Options Should I Consider?
Historically, trim has been used for decoration and functionally, to add insulation to homes with concrete walls, or to protect the walls from scuffs, chairs scraping against them, or foot traffic marks along the bottom. Recently, more creative homeowners have been using different trim types as decoration exclusively or to cover up imperfections, exposed joints, or gaps. Trim has many creative and interesting uses, and when you are thinking about adding trim to your home, there are several factors to consider for your design ideas.
1. What Size Trim Do You Need for Your Rooms?
Depending on where you are putting your trim, thinking about size is essential. If you are putting it in an office with many books, you might want a more significant piece to stand out amongst the chaos of the books.
Or, if you are putting trim in a child’s playroom, you may be looking for a smaller, functional piece that can protect where a play kitchen is stored and often hits the wall. The trim size does just as much for the room’s aesthetic as the other factors in this list.
2. What Type of Trim Fits Your Goals?
There are several types of trim to suit your needs. Whether you are looking for something elegant to upgrade the look of your dining room or something simple to close off a space between a cabinet and a wall, there is a type of trim best suited to those needs. At The Moulding Company, we offer all kinds of moulding, from baseboard to wainscoting cap, so you can find everything you need right here. Some types of popular options we offer include:
- Baseboard
- Wainscot
- Chair Rail
- Crown Moulding
- Flexible Moulding
- And More
Please refer to our catalog for more information about any of our trim moulding. If you have any questions about a product, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are ready to help you achieve the aesthetic you have in mind.
3. What Materials Are Available?
It can be challenging to choose an appropriate material for what you want to do with your trim. For example, if you wish to add a border to an arched doorway, a flexible wood moulding might be best. Our trims come in various wood species options or medium density fiberboard, depending on the product, so you can find the suitable material for what you want to do.
4. Have You Thought About Placement?
The placement of your trim will determine the final look of your home. Too much can overwhelm the eye, whereas too little can do the opposite—underwhelm. Some people use trim to create picture frame wall moulding, which instantly elevates the look of a room and makes it more elegant.
Others use baseboards to make a more seamless transition to the floor. Ensure your trim placement is ideal for keeping your guests perfectly whelmed and pleasantly impressed with your beautiful home. If you are having trouble deciding how much is too much or need direction on where to place trim for the most effective look upgrade, contact us today for help!
What Color Trim Should I Use?
The fifth factor you need to consider when thinking about trim is color choice. This decision might just be the most crucial part of the process because choosing the correct color for your moulding will take all your other decisions and either mute or amplify them and how they work with the room.
Many people opt to stick with white trim for their projects, but using different colors can change the whole appearance of a room. What color you choose will make the room appear either more expansive and open or smaller and less inviting, thanks to how our eyes process colors.
Where Does Dark Trim Work Best?
Dark trim and light walls have become more popular as people discover the appeal of using contrasting colors for a statement piece in a single room. Trim is absolutely a statement piece, as it adds to the profile of a wall or draws the eye to a desired focal point. Using dark colors for your trim used to be considered distasteful, but lately, homeowners have come to appreciate the contrast this bold decision offers your home.
Dark or even black trim can be a powerful accent statement to lighter, neutral wall colors, providing a difference that adds a sense of depth and sleek power to a room. This starkness is especially desirable in any room where you want more personality to show through, like an office or hobby room.
If you don’t want to paint your trim black, you can opt to go for the same color as your walls but a few shades darker, or you can go with a more traditional look by staining your trim with different finishes. Dark trim works best in a room that is open to some darker accents, like you will find in more modern homes, giving the room a closer, more intimate feel.
What Does Light Trim Suit Best?
Going with lighter trim colors can be perfect for classic or traditional homes, particularly ones with robust architectural features you want to highlight and add elegance to the space. White is often the go-to color for lighter trim, and it is frequently seen as the universally acceptable choice for trim no matter what style of room or home you have.
If you have dark walls, light trim can make the room feel lighter and bring some cheer while making your windows and doorways pop with brightness. It will also help open the room, as the bright colors of the light trim reflect light and make your darker rooms appear more inviting. If you have a lighter room and want to use light moulding to go with it, white trim can still help that brightness and add a cohesiveness that ties the whole room together.
Have You Considered Same-Color Trim?
If your home is contemporary and you want an open, airy feel to your room, choose a trim color that is the same color or tinted similarly to your walls to achieve that effect. It’s important to remember to keep the tints the same feel and tone as your walls, so if you have warm-colored walls, warmer paints will complement them.
Cold-colored walls look best with cool-toned trim in the same shade or cool hues of the same color. Making the trim the same color as the walls—or very close to it—helps bring the room together and gives it a smooth, almost seamless finish.
So How Do You Know What Color Trim to Pick?
Choose your trim color for each room individually, but keep in mind the overall look you want. If you pick a black trim in a space that is very centered on light colors and expansive windows—and you want to keep it that way—the dark frame could pull the attention away from your soft accents and give the room a darker feel.
However, if you’re trying for a unique, deep, or even mysterious look, dark trim and light walls might be a perfect choice. White is the safety fallback because it will always look beautiful, but a frame that more closely matches the color of your walls will add airiness and a more seamless look to your room.
Let The Moulding Company Help with All Your Trim Choices!
The trim you choose will dictate both the feel and the aesthetic of your home, so you want to pick something that speaks to your personality as much as possible. If you aren’t sure what look you’re going for, what material is best suited to the job you were hoping to complete, or what trim color you want, talk to an expert who can help you decide! Let The Moulding Company help you through all your trim decisions if you want the perfect room.
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