Crown moulding when ceilings are low-ish?

Crown mouldings will not make the ceilings look low. They look great even in a 8'4" ceiling and yours is even higher. The key is SCALE. I'd start out considering crowns that extend no more than 4-5" down the wall from the ceiling. Base boards can be higher--like 7-10". Check out Dykes Lumber for samples. Crowns are best done in a material called MDF (medium density fiberboard) which will not warp, contract or expand and thus is better for avoiding cracks at the seams as time goes by. Baseboards can be MDF, but ONLY if you are very light on your apartment--MDF is softer than wood and will damage easily if you smash things into it. If you have kids in the apt, use wood for base boards. Panels I think depend upon the space. You don't want to look pretentious. If it is consistent with the architecture, then it can be okay, but be very careful with this.

Define "large room". If your room is, say, 14' by 22', then I think you're fine. That ceiling height supports a room of that size well. If we're talking, say, 20' x 40', then no. You don't want anything drawing eyes to the edge between the ceiling and the wall, which will accentuate the height of the room.

if you paint the mouldings pistachio, it'll lesson the pain of owning shelter based asset as it nosedives into oblivion with each 25 bps increase in rates....

I prefer glossy white on mouldings myself, so I rented one with them already on. It makes my pistachio walls "pop."

If it's in a NY apartment building, crown moulding is NOT consistent with the architecture, and it IS pretentious.

Consider picture rail moulding, I think it's called, instead -- authentic, and creates a sky effect by suggesting that wall area above it and ceiling are one unit, painted the same.

Pistachio, of course.

alanhart,

it is simply untrue that crown moulding is inconsistent with new york city prewar apartments--that is, it is certainly not inconsistent with all. my apartment, in a building from the 1920s, retains its original crown and picture rail mouldings; baseboards have been replaced.

An 8'10" ceiling is not notably low, and can certainly support crown mouldings. Personally, I am very much in the less-is-more school when it comes to mouldings. I also think that you generally benefit from staying true to the original character of the apartment. Do you know how the walls were addressed in the original construction of the building? If the apartment is from the late 30s it probably had quite minimal wall decoration. Your apartment may start to look like a mcmansion if you take an essentially modern space and try to gussy it up with inconsistent flourishes that don't fit.

Panel moulding, on the other hand, sounds entirely inappropriate for a 1930s New York City apartment, and would be both pretentious and fussy. The same is true for wainscoting and chair rail mouldings, which exist in some apartment houses up to the 1920s (usually in dining rooms) but never in the 1930s.

We crowned a "standard" height living room in a prewar and it made the ceiling look higher. As far as the panel molding, buildings built in 1930 had it, so you're less than a decade off. Probably the biggest mismatch is that your floors probably aren't bordered -- but give yourself some credit: if you are imagining it, it's probably not a horrible idea.

If you go with panel molding I would skim-coat the walls though.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Alanhart,

I just left an aprtment at Manhattan House that has beautiful plaster moldings, there is nothing pretentious about it at all. This is coming from a person (me) that doesnt care for crown molding but i see why some do like it

First apartment, I have installed many crown moldings in apartment that are only 8' high, you will be fine

Add me to the chorus of people who despise crown moulding. It is anti-modern. It has no functional purpose. It's purely ornamental. And it invariably evokes images of cheaply built tract McMansions hastily built during the early part of this century. It's one thing to have original plaster crown moulding in a Georgian or neo-classic building. But it's another thing to add it after-the-fact in a building that is anything less than OPULENT. It comes across as purely aspirational, tacky and desperate in that case.

I do understand everyone's disdain for crown and again i would not put it in my home (ultra modern) but I have installed some in rooms that look great.

Personally I love crown molding if the space calls for it. As another poster pointed out, though, you wouldn't want to force it into a modern-style apartment. But in an older, early 1900's through late '20's place it can work beautifully, especially if it was there originally. My own preference is to reserve crown molding for rooms with higher ceilings (10ft and above) but that's just my personal taste.

I do echo the sentiment that if molding (crown, picture or otherwise) doesn't 'fit' the space it can look tacky and edge into the tasteless--think modern Jersey "Italiante" McMansions with faux marble fountains on the front lawn, plaster columns in the foyer, and living rooms decked out in gilt and fresco. Things like that just come across as garish and cheap.

Thank you for all your thoughts & ideas. The room we're planning on putting it in is 22'x27'. Two one bedrooms were combined by the previous owners, to create, among other things, a gigantic living/dining room. I thought it needed some moulding to somehow break up the wide expanse of ceiling. I'm definitely not looking to turn it into something it isn't, but it just seems like a lot of ceiling. Perhaps instead of crown moulding we can put a slim border of moulding framing the ceiling, a foot or so in from the edges, creating a rectangle inside the ceiling. I've seen it done in lobbies, and thought this might work as well. Or maybe there's some other kind of architectural detail to break up the room into separate areas.

I do wish there were a way to append jpg photos on streeteasy because an image is sometimes worth a lot of words. Blanket statements like crowns are ALWAYS wrong are obviously extreme, outlier views. If you have ceiling to floor windows and live in a glass box, be serious--no one is adding crown mouldings. But tastefully done with restraint and great attention to scale, crowns can "finish" a room, add the impression of greater height, and really tie together a design scheme. The same might be said of window treatments: even in a more modern space (maybe not a glass box), a roller shade with a properly scaled cornice (some people would call it is valence but it isn't) can be fantastic.

In the end, creating visual and design coherence in a space is a creative endeavor with few hard and fast rules that apply 100% of the time. Beware of anyone who suggests otherwise. Flipping through design mags and looking at the details in the rooms, such as mouldings, is a great way to get ideas of what other people do. I also find certain television shows informative from an art decoration standpoint. For example, live in a mid-20th century building and wanna know about late 1950's through mid-1960's interior design? You don't get much better than Mad Men for inspiration and guidance.

"I'm definitely not looking to turn it into something it isn't, but it just seems like a lot of ceiling."

Clearly you need a fresco, then ;).

Kylewest,

Well said again and there must be a way to at least link a picture or two

I've always thought that putting moulding on the bottom of the wall, and not putting it on top, makes the ceiling look higher.

i would look at open houses of apartments that have similar size rooms and see what they did with them. it's possible that if furniture is placed the right way, it may not look that way. you can also consider an off-white paint color so as not to see so much of a "blank canvas". maybe the light setup can break up the ceiling as well.. etc

Somewhereelse,

That is called base molding, they are talking about crown molding. 99% of all homes have basemolding, only some have crown molding

Since this is the centerpiece room of your home, consider getting an architect or designer to come in on a consulting basis to help give you some ideas. He/she might come up with some ideas that you haven't thought of that might be architecturally appropriate (for example, have you thought about coving, which done right can look slightly more subtle and possibly more 30s-era than crown molding?). I'm sure you could get some recommendations on this site.