THE SMALL VIOLENCE OF A SKIRTING BOARD

Parlour Postcard 005

A skirting board is rarely treated as a dramatic object. When did you actually notice it last?

It is removed, replaced, boxed around, slimmed down, simplified, bought in haste, painted white and expected to just hide the join between floor and wall. Yet few things reveal a room’s treatment faster. The wrong skirting board can make an old wall look suddenly wrong-footed, as though the room is wearing the wrong sized shoes.

Skirtings are part of the room’s grammar. Their height, thickness, profile and relationship to architraves tell the eye how the wall meets the floor. They anchor scale. They link between plaster and boards. They carry shadow and weight. In older houses they often belong to a family of details: door surrounds, picture rails, cornices, fireplaces, window linings. Change one and the others begin to look out of sorts.

The damage can be small and still visible. A thin modern board in a generous Victorian room. A crude profile. A deep board jammed into a modest cottage room because somebody decided ‘period’ means large and ornate.

The house may survive. Most houses do. Yet something may be lost. The line at the base of the wall no longer belongs to the rest of the space. Small decisions in old interiors are rarely insignificant.

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Short notes from Studio Wallander on old house interiors,

materials, details, and design opinions.