aww thanks justgotabeme, I had pics earlier before the reno was done, maybe a few here and there on the kitchen forum (we're re-doing the whole house) - but it's just now starting to come together. The casings were just put up last week but I don't have pics (long distance reno.) I'll post more when there's more to see. :-) It will be a while before we even have furniture in. I have a website that needs updating badly, but here it is, mostly "before" and "during"

Here is a link that might be useful: my site

They're absolutely not too wide. I just hate a lot of newer houses which have high ceilings and itty bitty baseboards. That's what looks ugly, to me because they're not in proportion with the room. I assume that's a current "style" because itty bitty baseboards are cheaper. I also like plainer baseboards. It's also easier to put shorter base in when walls aren't particularly straight, as happens in older and newer houses.

I think you'll love your base once you get used to it.

My contractor thought we were nuts to use 1x8s for our baseboard. I kept trying to tell him that every old home I've lived in had tall baseboards - my grandma's farmhouse had 10" baseboards! Our last house in Boston had 8" (before the cap.) In fact, our cousin loved our thick baseboards in our Boston house so much he ripped the builder's grade out of his entire house and put them in there.

I think my GC was just used to doing builder's grade stuff. And that most people are used to seeing it. No one had ever asked him to do them this high before. (upstairs they could have been a bit shorter, b/c of the sloped walls - but since they slope there can be no art so we wanted interest in the moldings, at least.) I don't care what he thinks, (I think he still thinks they are too high.) We love them.

I'm inspired! I'm taking back the 5 inchers and going to get some 8's myself :)

In my family room, I have 11 1/2" baseboards and they are beautiful. I wish they were all over the house, but cant be because of low windows in some areas. I believe they were originally put in to cover some kind of "issue", but whatever the reason, I'm glad they are there....it makes the room look very stately.

naw they will be fine

I have 8ft ceilings and went with 4 1/2 I wish I had gone a little wider.

I have 9-ft. ceilings, vaulted to 13 in the living room. I had the original skinny baseboards. When I had hardwood floors installed, and the baseboards had to come off anyway, I had them replaced with 5-1/4". Best low-cost upgrade ever! They won't look too large. You'll love them and wonder why you ever doubted.

The big baseboards are beautiful! They're MOP boards -- extra tall so that your maids could mop up to the edge of the floors without getting your walls wet with the big, thick mop heads long ago. Beautiful and practical!

I agree, deep is better. :) My house was built 1949, craftsman/mission influences. All my baseboards are 8", thick planks including a bevel edge of about 2" (8ft ceilings). I love them, and would never change them out for anything less.

I think they're fabulous. I even wish I'd gotten taller baseboards for our 8' ceilinged house--I just replaced what had been here. Good choice.

Anyone mind sharing what they spent /lf to have these amazing baseboards installed? The quote from my contractor seems much higher than I expected.

Vivachick I couldn't tell you - we're doing the whole house so it kind of got all lumped in. I called DH and asked if he could remember, but he can't.

If it helps, we used 1x8 poplar, with a stock just over 1" cap. You could also do a 1x6 if 8 seemed too scary ;-). Is your GC already doing "regular" baseboard, but hiked the price b/c you wanted it higher? If so then I'd find out what kind of materials he intends to use. Poplar is best, but Prime pine would be the next best, I believe. (few knots) Then find out what those cost vs. whatever he was going to use before. Sorry I can't really help.

Mairin we're also doing big honking crown. And our downstairs window and door casings are huge. (6.5") We like beefy woodwork. ;-)

The baseboards we put in the office (shown), master bedroom, and sewing room are all 5 1/2 inches tall. I wish I had gone much taller.

The rooms are small, 11x13, 11x14, and 12x12, and all have 8' ceilins with 4" crown.

We'll be doing the living room this summer. I hope to use much beefier trim and molding in here, even though it's not a large room either.

I love the look of tall, thick, baseboard.

The colors are all off in this photo; the hallway is being preped for painting and trim; the vinyl for the bathroom floor is rolled up and waiting in the arched doorway into the unfinished living room. You can barely see the 5 1/2" baseboard in the lilac sewing room.

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When we redid the master suite-lette at our previous house (a 1994 tract Cape) we used baseboards a tad over 7" tall with 7 1/2 foot ceilings. The total combination of cove molding and top border - handprinted paper from Bradbury & Bradbury - was about the same. Made the 3 1/4" builder-generic baseboard in the rest of the house look REALLY wimpy! We also increased the width of the door and window casings by about half. It was done with simple oak lumber with some inexpensive cap moldings, which cut the cost massively vs. using premade oak "baseboard molding" with the exact same profile. The rooms were on the smaller side - bedroom 12x13ish, bath 8x8 - but beefing up the moldings didn't make the rooms seem any smaller, just less cheap-feeling. (No insult intended to those who prefer the smaller moldings, and there are some architectural styles that are suited to very small or even no moldings, but to me it seemed cheap.)

Our current house, a 1900 Victorian Lite ;-), has baseboards varying between 9 and 10 inches tall, in rooms with ceilings varying from 8 to 8 3/4 feet. The LR has an old picture molding instead of crown, about 2" tall and about 1/2" down from the ceiling for slipping on a picture hook, but it will be replaced with something beefier and actually abutting the ceiling when the ceiling is replaced (we have to pull it down to sister the upstairs joists and fix the "trampoline floor". Rooms are small here too, the largest single room is 12x15 - the EIK is something like 16x22 but it's really two rooms that are still partially separated. The big chunky flat moldings were one of the things that suckered us into ;-) the house.

Wow you all have made me feel so much better about my 5.25 inch baseboards!! THANK YOU !!!!

Now I am scared I will want even taller base boards : )

I have the itty bitty ones too, and they're a pain, but I have a question. Are the wider ones used in more traditional homes? What if you were doing a modern-contemporary remodel, would you do wider boards still?

Ours are 7" with 8 and 8.5' ceilings. Wide shot and a close up of the details (and no, the bar base is not finished) :)

We have 12" baseboard, original to our Craftsman house. We just finished putting 10" ones in our new bathroom upstairs. Ceiling are 9' up there. They look great.

Mairin, *what* color is that body of your room. I'm shopping paint and just swooned over the color. I want to be a copy cat. Please tell me! If you don't come back here, I'll start a new thread with your name in the title.

caroline, love your wall color. Wanted to mention that when you get ready to enlarge your moldings, you may be able to add to what you have vs tearing it all and replacing it.

"Are these baseboards too wide" is kind of like asking "Is this diamond too big?"

:)

Never fear, tall baseboards have solid historical precedent, and really serve to "anchor" a room. My house was redecorated in 1907 with 1x8 baseboards with a 1.5" cap molding; total= 10 5/8" tall. On the first floor with 10' ceilings this looks just right. The second floor is just under 8' ceilings, and it still looks fine. This is a second floor room.

or, is this too much toile?

I just had big 7 in. baseboards put in, ripping out all the skimpy 60s clamshell. My contractor and a realtor friend both told me that it's a common upgrade in our area. My inspiration was a friend's 1920s Cape Cod style home: low ceilings, no crown molding, but the most beautiful big baseboards and wide window trim. It added such wonderful character to her charming home. It's made a world of difference in my own home too.

When we planned for our renovation last year, of course the estimate came back far, far more than we'd hoped. My husband took our wish list and started crossing out projects. When he crossed out "New Baseboard, Trim & Interior Doors," I burst into tears! I was surprised myself by the outburst, but I have hated our cheesy woodwork & flat hollow core doors for years. To my eye, it's what made the house look like a bland 60s tract home more than any other feature. So my husband, who is wonderful, agreed to forgo new garage doors and new family room flooring in exchange for my curious request. Now he's glad he agreed. Our home looks more substantial, interesting, sheltering, welcoming, cozy...all that good stuff.

You guys are making me want wide baseboards! Love them :-)

Sorry, brutuses, but there IS such a thing as too much toile. ;-)

Here's a cheat for those of you who lust for bigger baseboards but can't or don't want to replace what you currently have. Run a strip of narrow molding (half round, ribbed screen molding, rope molding, whatever coordinates nicely with the rest of the moldings in the room) a couple of inches above the existing baseboard. Paint it and the space between the small molding and the baseboard to match the baseboard, including using the same sheen. It gives the illusion of a somewhat chunkier baseboard, although obviously it won't stand up to very close examination. It's one way to give a little more oomph to those scrawny builders' baseboards. I once read a sensible formula for deciding how high to place the little supplemental molding - not more than half the width of the existing baseboard. That means if your existing baseboard is 3.5" tall, put the supplemental molding so that the top edge is 1.75" above the top of the existing baseboard. More than that and it looks a bit too two-dimensional. You can do the same thing with crown molding.

About half the baseboards in our current ca.1900 house are just plain flat board - there's only a decorative cap on it in 1 1/2 rooms. Sometime after it's been stripped of the decades of gloppy paint obscuring the details I intend to take a small section of the cap off and have a custom router bit made to match that profile so I can finish off the baseboards in the rest of the house so they are all up to a matching 10".

mari, glad you posted that. I was going to but thought people would think me nuts. LOL It is the most inexpensive way of enlarging and it looks great. There is so much that can be done with just small pieces of trim. It just take some imagination.

johnmari, I used "fancy" baseboards in our LR, foyer, & DR -- the formal rooms. The rest of the house now has plain flat boards like yours. Ditto the window trim: the formal rooms have back bands and mitered trim. The windows in the rest of the house are trimmed with plain boards and post & lintel (is that what you'd call it?) framing.

Monica, what is your room color name? Gorgeous baseboards and room! Is the cap on your baseboard a separte piece of wood?

Thansk for sharing!

awm03, only the LR and one short wall of what used to be the DR and is now part of the EIK - PO took down most of the wall between the two rooms, because each was too small to be useful by itself - retain the original complete baseboard. About half the remaining baseboard in the EIK and the front hallway/foyer are minus their caps, although you can see in some spots where they used to be. (Let's not talk about the places where he just didn't even try to repair or replicate the original plain baseboard - just a board 1" thick and a wee bit short of 9" tall, not exactly rocket surgery ;-) - and slapped on 3 1/4" clamshell baseboard. *shudder*) The downstairs would be the priority for fixing those; upstairs they're all hacked-up with different heights, thicknesses, styles, it's a mess, but you can see some traces that the upstairs hallway also had some type of cap although probably less nice than the downstairs one. The window and door casings are all identical throughout the house though, with nothing interesting like backbanding or mitering. Just broad, flat, butt-jointed boards with the header about 1/16th of an inch thicker and wider than the rest to make a shadow line, except where PO mucked it up. It would be one thing if he tried to make it look reasonable but he didn't even put in that much effort.

I joke about living in the circa-1900 version of tract housing; I live in an old mill/factory town and thousands of houses just like mine were built between the mid-1880s and WWI for the factory workers to live in. Some were a bit larger and had fancier detailing, some were tiny and plain like mine (

That's so interesting, johnmari. Thanks for posting.

circa-1900 version of tract housing -- LOL! But I know what you mean, having seen many homes like that in the old industrial towns here in the northeast. I've often wondered what life was like in those communities back then. Very hard work with long hours by one bread winner, but I'm sure everyone knew all the people in the neighborhood, and their lives were intertwined.

What a bunch of pretty pictures!

Casey, is that room in your home? It's gorgeous.

You can't be too thin or have too fat baseboards. ;o)

johnmari, that's an excellent and creative tip! I don't need it but surely I'll come across someone, sometime that does :)

Thank you for the kind words :)) The paint color is SW's Hopsack. And yes, the cap is a separate piece of trim. I think it's a total of 3 pieces. DH did the alltrim work. He wanted wider baseboards and wider crown molding but I thought it would be too much for our modest home.

Monica

I have tall baseboards throughout my home. My formal rooms have 8 ft. ceilings and I definitely don't think they are too tall.

oceanna, thanks, that's my bedroom. I wish I could stay awake to enjoy it, but the mattress is so sleep-inducing.
Casey

acountryfarm,

Your home is beautiful! The molding, trim, and colums are so much more interesting than a bland open floor plan.

eroz

Thanks Monica!

acountryfarm, what height are your baseboards? TIA

My baseboards are 9 inches tall.

I have high baseboards. I think they're very Arts & Crafts looking. I also have wide trim around my doors. Love the look.

Thanks for sharing!

For those of you who upgraded to taller baseboards, how wide is your casing around the doors and windows? I'm wanting to go to 5 1/4 baseboards but have the usual 2 1/4 inch builder grade casing and am concerned about the proportions and styles when mixing them.

It's a simple traditionally styled home with narrow dutchlap siding and paneled shutters. A bit of beadboard was added that maybe gives it some cottage look. The ceilings are 8 feet. The floors are 2 1/4 inch golden oak. The doors are 6 panel colonial.

{{!gwi}}

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I like the baseboard below. It would have a shoe molding. Does anyone have this combination of baseboard and door casing? Anyone who is familiar with these moldings, do you think they'll look alright together and with the style of my house?

Does this baseboard strike you as formal? I love moldings but am not going for a formal look. It's possible I'd add a moderate crown, maybe 2 1/2 inch, at some point but am not sure.

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

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I've been looking at casings & baseboards too. I tested the combo of a 2.5" casing with a 5.25" baseboard and it looked really nice to me - something about the proportions. I don't think the baseboard you've chosen is formal, either. The shoe molding adds more detail that might veer it more formal, so you might consider losing that. I would also consider a larger crown - maybe 3 5/8 or 4?

I've tentatively decided to go with a 3.5" casing, 5.25" or 6" baseboard, and 4.25" crown. I have 8' ceilings.

Hi tracie. I'm finding the 2.5 looks much better than the 2.25 even though it seems like such a small difference in width. The segments are also more spread out which looks better with this baseboard. I showed them to some friends today. They liked the narrow one but as soon as they saw the 2.5 they said hands down for the same reasons.

I'm glad to hear you did like the 2.5 and that it didn't strike you as too narrow. I'm going to swap out the downstairs after all since it seems to make such a difference.

These are the moldings that were readily available at the Home Depot. I think I'll check out some lumber yards to see what else might look good with this baseboard. With my house, anything larger than the 2.5 would get cramped in some areas so that's probably the max here. There is 3 inch on one doorway in the kitchen which does look nice with it.

Good luck with your selections and thank you for your opinion.

where did you get your baseboards - do you have the actual item number? thank you!

Are you aware that the last post was from 2011?

And the original post was over 7 years ago.

So what if posts are old. I am fairly new to this forum & find some questions helpful & interesting . I read these like a book when I am having dinner alone. I just skip over questions that don't interest me!! Keep it going girls!!!!

Amen! I've said this many times. I've been here since 2002 and someone can always find use for an older thread. That's how these threads get resurrected...someone has googled the topic. If older posts were irrelevant, I don't think Gardenweb/Houzz would keep them around wasting space on their servers :)

Is there a creative way to make door and window casing look wider? I am having the same proportions issue with my current 21/4 casing. I have skimpy 31/2 baseboards now, but want to widen my baseboard to 51/4. (My husband just added 51/4 crown molding in two rooms so I am going to need to make some molding adjustments throughout my home).