Help sizing crown and basebord moulding

[Nick Clayton]

Hi All,
I am ready to start finish carpentry on our renovated bathroom. The room is small with about 5'x7' of floor space with 7' ceilings not including the tiled tub area. My wife and I would like to use crown moulding, but are unaware of how to size it to the room. Obviously a 6" crown would look silly, but would a 1 3/4" crown look too small?
Our house has classic 3 1/2" colonial baseboard profile should we stick with that for continuity or can we use 5" with an interesting cap? Door and window moldings are 2 1/4 colonial profile which we intend to stick with.
Thanks for your help.
Cheers,
Nick

[Chris Harry]

With 7' ceilings I would keep the height of the moldings to a minimum, otherwise they might look like they are taking over the whole wall.

Ive used 3-5/8" crown (pretty sure from HD or Lowes) in my house and it looks nice. We have 8' ceilings, but I paint the molding white (or at least much different than the wall color) and it makes the ceilings feel higher. Even better is paint the ceiling the same color as the wall with the crown molding bright white.

Along the same lines, Id stick with 3-1/2" for the baseboard. 2-1/4" is correct for the window and door.

[John R Green]

Nick,

Down here in NE Fla we have 1 5/8" , 2 5/8" , 3 5/8"......from the Real Lumber Companies.

The box stores have 2 1/4", 3 1/4".

3 5/8" would look fine, especially if painted a contrasting color from the wall & ceiling.

John

[Chris Friesen]

I think it depends somewhat on the style of the room/house. Modern houses generally have a lot less in the way of trim than they used to, and I think it's mostly because the builders cheap out.

My parents have a 100 year old Craftsman style house, lots of wide fir moldings, proper window sills, etc. We're talking 1x6" baseboard (maybe more, haven't measured it) for standard height ceilings. Any renos cost a fortune just in materials to match the old trim.