When it comes to skirting boards and architraves there is often a view that bigger is better.
Certainly larger products like our ‘Ellington‘ and ‘Leven‘ add real value and can be very impressive when entering a building.
However, upon first glance often our smaller architraves are overlooked.
Yet larger architraves and skirting boards make a bold statement, sometimes the smaller ones can have equally as much impact just in a more subtle way.
At Period Mouldings we always tried to evangelise our products in the context of appropriate customer settings.
Yet a barrier we often encounter is in letting our customers know that as well as offering our classic range (found via the website) we also offer alternatives, be they bespoke solutions or our Heritage Range designs (sourced through various UK period properties).
The Hunt for Smaller Moulds
Getting smaller moulds might sound like an easy task but having scoured our archives (which number close to 400 authentic designs) I found that it is rare for people to request smaller architraves to be remade, suggesting that vast amounts are being replaced with homogeniously interior designs.
In our case it is true that for larger customer contracts we have scaled down our Gainsborough (originally 144mm) to 110mm but when you are looking for authentic moulds of 70mm or below even we found the choice becomes more limited – but, as ever – we are always up for a challenge.
With this in mind I decided to ransack our archives and promote some of these smaller architraves that would work at this size whilst still offering customers choice, especially on the higher floors of the houses where historically skirting and architraves get smaller.
Lessons learnt in searching out these small gems?
Firstly they are hard to find and can be overlooked with ease.
Yet smaller architraves do offer both value and aesthetic enhancement and should never been seen as poor relations to their larger neighbours. In fact they serve as a reminder to the adage that ‘less is more’.