With a housing boom in cities following the industrial revolution, many of the homes in Britain’s architectural landscape are period properties built in the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian eras. As thousands of people flocked to cities, there was little space to build sprawling homes, and wealth was instead demonstrated through the finer details.
Proportions were much more generous than they tend to be now and ceilings were much higher. Moulding was used to add decoration and interest to rooms – the more elaborate, the better. Picture rails – the strips of moulding that sit just below the ceiling – served two functions: to balance out the height of the ceiling to give a room a better sense of proportion, and to allow items to be hung around the walls without worry of damaging them. Dado rails – the strips of moulding that run along the wall at waist height – were originally created to protect walls from furniture banging against them.
Period homes still have these features, and people are often perplexed at how best to work them into their design scheme. Check out these images for a visual guide to the effects that can be created by painting dado and picture rails in different ways.
