Crown Molding Adds Elegance to a Home

2/28/2008

(ARA) - New furniture and a fresh coat of paint are great places to start when updating your home, but what can you do to go above and beyond to really make your house stand out? Often what makes a home interesting and noteworthy are the little details. The latest trend in decorating rooms today is to add architectural details that give a new dimension to a room.

As more and more condos, apartments, town homes and single-family homes with standardized floor plans are built in mass, less and less differentiation between units is occurring in the building phase, leading homeowners to seek interior design expertise or to initiate do-it-yourself (DIY) remodeling projects that will give their rooms new architectural dimensions.

Crown molding, probably the most popular architectural addition to rooms today, does for a room what accessories do for an outfit -- it adds style, personality and detail. From the kitchen to the dining room to the bathroom, any room can be dressed up with the simplest addition of customized molding.

"Crown molding adds a certain class to a room -- an architectural elegance," says Chele Benjamin, owner of Chele Benjamin Interior Design in Chicago. "There's just a certain added dimension to a room with crown molding that homeowners want."

One way to integrate molding into a room is to drop the molding from the ceiling and add lighting behind it. Benjamin says this option adds flavor to both the ceiling and the walls. Or another idea is to utilize extra wall space by creating two rows of molding and varying your color palette above and below each row for a crisp look. Courtesy of ARAcontent