Decorating Walls

Decorating Walls Through the Use of Strategic Molding

Decorating walls has an enormous amount of balance and strategy needed to accurately beautify your surroundings. Your walls tie in all your furnishings, keep the flow of energy through your room, and accessorize your interior decorating through your own personal style and creativity.

We have addressed lots of wall issues on our pages from general wall flow techniques, interior wall decorating, to specific help in accessory placement on your walls. There is a lot to consider in the use of your walls in order for it to compliment and enhance your interior decorating.

Home tips for Wall Decorating
Interior Wall Decorating
Accessory Placement on Walls

We are now going to offer specific interior wall decorating tips for decorating walls that are large that do not anchor furniture. These do not exist in every home because most walls anchor some sort of furniture or focal point such as a fireplace or window.

When these walls do exist they in itself offer unique challenges. Often found in dining rooms or open hallways. These walls need to be brought down to size to compliment your room. In order to make your wall "smaller" you need to think "big". Decorating these walls will be organized and precise.

Your best friends in large wall decorating will be strategic use of paint and molding.

long tall wall has decorative challenges so your decorating won't be

Our example of a long tall wall will be visually altered through the use of molding. Any molding in our decorating can be replaced by paint or wallpaper border to achieve the same effect.

A simple chair rail shortens your wall to reduce the overbearing effect of a large empty wall. A chair rail gives decorating opportunity to paint, panel, texturize, or wallpaper the lower half adding decorative interest and energy to your room.

Chair rails can be hung 30 to 42 inches--the usual is 36 inches. In older homes the walls may not be level, so even though you painstakingly level your chair rail it may appear crooked. To fix this use tape on the wall through the use a balance between a visual point of reference such as baseboards and your level to come to a happy medium.

chair rail gives decorating opportunity above and below line

Very tall walls can host two levels of molding. With a chair rail already in place you can drop down from your ceiling line or crown molding line one to two feet and use decorative molding there as well. This is very dramatic. Again like the chair rail you have extended decorating opportunity above and below these lines.

The use of three variations of the same color or bold contrasts or monochromatic with the exception of the painted molding these are all great options to make the most of your molding.

Remember the use of paint or wallpaper can achieve the same effect of the actual molding..

the drop down molding gives more decorating options for bold statements

Another neat technique drops your molding down from your ceiling or crown molding one to two feet with the absence of a chair rail. This will still give the feeling of height but bring your wall down just a tad.

This technique, with a shelf or plate rack in place of the molding gives another decorating opportunity to showcase collections of frames, vases, plates, or other related objects.

Another neat choice in place of the molding or shelf can be a flat wood 4 to 8 inches with a host of hooks or even old door knobs. The possibilities are endless.

dropping molding down gives unique decorating options

When you walk through model homes that are large, you will notice the use of molding in lots of variations. It is an easy interior wall decorating trick to bring luminous walls down to size. They may do rectangles of molding instead of a chair rail or a large rectangle in place of a chair rail. The interior of these molded shapes can be painted in contrasting colors or even wallpapered.

the use of molding in shapes gives architectural interest and sized down your wall

Once you get comfortable with the idea of the use of molding to decorate and break up your walls your creativity will start to abundantly flow.

Another interior decorating tip is to use molding to create large frames attached to the wall at a height that is complimentary to hanging pictures. Then paint the interior of this faux frame a contasting color, this then becomes your mat. Now within your faux frame hang a picture. It is a great way to showcase simple related prints and decorate your wall at the same time.

frame out framed pictures for dramatic presentation and bring your wall down to size

Taken one step at a time decorating walls is the most rewarding because it really becomes the glue that holds it all together.

When decorating walls be creative, take ideas and guidelines and put your own twist on it. Make it your own!

Decorating walls tips

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