Topping it Off: Cornices

An even simpler technique for creating a cornice effect is to simply paint a border around the top of the wall. You don't need to try to simulate the detail of real molding if you choose a color that stands out dramatically from the walls and ceiling. This is a great short-term solution in a room that you intend to rip apart in a few years, or in a rental where your decorating options are limited to paint.

Using Cornice Techniques to Adjust Room Proportions

The advantage of the "easy" techniques is that they can readily be used to make a room with a low ceiling seem more spacious, or to remove the "lost in a pit" feeling in a tall but small room.

In a short room, apply the majority of your cornice decorations to the ceiling rather than the walls. You can put a wallpaper border on the ceiling, at the edges or even several inches in from the edge. If you use wood molding, apply rows of thin strips to the ceiling, with only an inch or so of molding on the wall. Choose molding in a color no darker, and no more intense, than the wall color; bring it closer to the ceiling color if you can (but no lighter than the ceiling color). The eye will see the ceiling as starting at the inside edge of the cornice molding!

For a tiny room with an excessively high ceiling, the cornice molding should be a distinctly darker and more intense color than the walls or ceiling. Bring the molding as far down the walls as you can without violating good proportion, and keep it off the ceiling. If the room is very high, you might even want to start the molding several feet below the ceiling and extend the ceiling color down to meet it.

Final Thought

Even if you're only looking at a quick repainting job and some new pillows, don't neglect the edge where walls meet ceiling. Painting a simple stripe takes only a few hours, including measuring and taping the edges, and it can do wonders to reproportion your room for a proper Victorian look. If the whole room has modernist proportions, you might even consider repeating your broad stripe around door and window frames to extend them to a size midway between your cornices and baseboards.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic