How to choose skirting boards for the floor by color, material and size - 50 photos and guide

Why do you need a plinth?

First of all, the plinth on the floor carries an aesthetic load. It gives the finish a finished look, but, in addition, it also closes the technological gap that is left when laying floor coverings. This gap is needed to allow the coating to expand and contract with changes in temperature and humidity. If this gap is not left, the coating will rise, move in waves, etc. But if you leave the gap open, debris will fall into it, and it looks unattractive. So the plinth strip closes the technological gap.

Choosing a plinth is not so easy. You need to choose the material, shape, size and color

There are also “special purpose” skirting boards. For example, with built-in lighting. They are good if you need dim diffused light in the dark. Any wall or ceiling lamps will “hurt the eye,” and illumination from below is the most gentle in this regard.

The second example of special skirting boards is with cable channels. They have been very popular lately. We need more and more cables to ensure a comfortable life. If a special channel is formed in the bar, a couple of cables can be laid in it.

Why plastic?

When laying flooring made of carpet or linoleum, a plastic baseboard for the floor is very suitable. Among the variety of types of finishing products for the floor, plastic baseboard confidently occupies its niche. And for good reason. After all, PVC planks have a number of advantages that a priori cannot compete with wood or aluminum. The advantages of using plastic strips are as follows:

• Easy to care for decorative panels. The plastic is easy to clean and does not collect dust.
• PVC panels, regardless of size, respond well to ultraviolet radiation and mechanical stress.
• Installing a plastic plinth is quite simple, no matter what its size.
• The presence of a rubberized gasket allows you to hide visible floor unevenness from prying eyes.
• Models of PVC strips allow you to hide the cable in special internal channels, no matter how many there are in the room.

In addition, the sizes, shades and models of PVC panels allow you to harmoniously complement almost any floor covering. The price of such a plinth will be slightly higher than a regular monolithic plank.

Types of skirting boards

If before there was no choice - only wooden planks, and not a very large assortment, today the number of positions can be a hundred or more, so there is plenty to choose from. Let's start looking at the types of skirting boards for the floor depending on the material.

• Made of wood. It is worth choosing a wooden baseboard if you have a wooden floor, parquet or parquet board. Moreover, the type of wood must match and the color, by the way, too. If you’re lucky, you can buy a ready-made one; if not, they’ll make it to order, but such finishing will not be cheap. Be sure to specify what should be made from dry wood, otherwise the products will later become deformed and even nails will not always be able to hold them in place.
• Skirting boards for flooring made of HDF or MDF. These are the same material, just different densities. A plank is formed from the mass, which is covered with a laminating PVC film or veneer. MDF baseboards covered with film are also called laminated. They are worth considering if you have linoleum or wood-look laminate installed. Match the color to the floor tone. The same type of molding can be matched to the color of the door trim. There are MDF baseboards that are sanded and ready for painting. There is room for imagination - you can paint it any color.

  
  Made from MDF for painting

• Plastic skirting boards for the floor. It is considered to be the cheapest, but this is not always the case. There are, of course, very cheap ones, but they also look appropriate, and there are more expensive ones. The more expensive ones may have cable ducts and rubberized edges. They are produced by laminate manufacturers. So when buying, think about the finishing. One manufacturer has a better chance of matching the baseboard perfectly to the floor covering. The match should be not only in color, but also in texture.
• Ceramic skirting boards for the floor. If the floor is tiled, you can make ceramic skirting boards. They can be matched to floor or wall decoration.

  
  Ceramic baseboards are installed in the kitchen, in the bathroom, where ceramic tiles or porcelain stoneware are laid on the floor

• Metal floor skirting boards. They are rarely found in apartments and houses, although many ultra-modern trends in design welcome metal. They are good in places with difficult operating conditions. They can be installed on the terrace, in an unheated vestibule, and so on. Typically made from aluminum, which can be polished, matte, or painted. There are options for laminated aluminum skirting boards. In this case, they can be matched to match the flooring or doors.
• Skirting boards for floors made of foam plastic or polyurethane, duropolymer. They are ideal for painting. If you want a plinth to match the walls, either use these or MDF. But, when using foam plastic, you need to be careful, since the material is not resistant to mechanical stress. Installation method: glue, additional fixation with nails or self-tapping screws is possible.

  
  Polyurethane skirting boards can be low, medium or very wide, smooth or with ornaments

These are all traditional materials from which floor skirting boards are made. But material is far from the only selection criterion.

How to choose a plinth: what to choose

First of all, the question arises: why, exactly, should we select it? To the doors? Flooring? Yes, but there are other options:

• To the door and cash. In this case, the doors are connected into a single system. Most often this technique can be found in the corridor or hallway. That is, where there are a lot of doors and it is they who mainly attract attention.

  
  Choosing a baseboard to match the color of the doors is one of the basic rules, but this is far from the only way to select a color

• Choose a white baseboard. This technique works great with light walls. It can also be used with more saturated colors, but this is more difficult and you need to look at the interior as a whole. Visually, the white plank in the floor area expands the space and does not “burden” the interior.

  
  The room looks more spacious and brighter

• Select a baseboard to match the floor covering. This choice is justified only when the pattern and shades match one to one. Even a small difference will be noticeable.

  
  You can match the baseboard color to the laminate from the same manufacturer. Or take a piece of coating with you and look in shops/markets

• One of the universal ways for living rooms is to paint the baseboard in the color of the walls. It works great with plain walls, but you can choose one of the shades, even if the walls are colored, with an ornament or pattern. Many modern styles go this way.

  
  The current trend is the same color of the baseboard and walls

• Choose the color of the baseboard to match one of the finishing elements. Picture frames in one color look most logical. There may be frames for medallions to match the furniture and even textiles. True, when changing textiles, you will also have to repaint the baseboard strip. But this allows you to quickly and inexpensively change the style of the room.

As you can see, before choosing the color of the baseboard, you need to create the interior, so the color is often decided on last. The exception is if you decide that the color should match the floor covering. This decision is often made if they plan to lay laminate on the floor. Then it’s easier and easier to take the moldings right away with the laminate.

Decor features

Varieties of white skirting boards

Decorating a room with light materials can be implemented according to different schemes. Accordingly, white skirting boards can also have different designs and be made from different raw materials. The modern market offers an extremely wide range of such products, and in the table below we provide brief characteristics of the most popular ones:

Ash wood detail

Ceramic moldings

As you can see, plastic furniture plinths, ceiling fillets, and ceramic borders for bathrooms or countertops can be made in white. This popularity is explained by the advantages that such products have.

Advantages and disadvantages

Polystyrene, wooden, and plastic white skirting boards have a number of advantages that are appreciated not only by interior designers, but also by ordinary owners of houses and apartments:

White ceiling plinth 19x24 mm 3000 mm, which is used when installing suspended structures

1. Such details are in harmony with almost any finishing material.
2. They perfectly perform their main function - masking the junction of two planes (wall and floor or wall and ceiling).
3. Merging with the light plane, the plinth visually expands it, making the room more spacious.

Translucent plastic insert

1. A plastic white matte insert into the baseboard can be used as a “screen” for built-in lighting, but the product will look neat even when the LEDs inside the trim are turned off.
2. The white color of the flooring and furniture moldings is ideal for laconic office solutions, emphasizing the severity of the environment.

Model for home and office with the possibility of hidden cable routing

1. Finally, if necessary, such a product can be coated with any paint without fear that the original shade will show through.

As for the disadvantages, here it is worth talking more about the features that need to be taken into account:

1. The light surface gets dirty easily, and when dirty it looks very untidy. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain the finish in perfect cleanliness.

The product must be perfectly clean, as in this photo

1. The price of natural wood with white wood is quite high, and the tinting of pine or ash panels has to be updated regularly.
2. In addition, you need to take into account that if among the ceiling fillets white is the dominant color, then you will have to spend time searching for floor plinths for interior decoration in light colors.

Choosing a mounting method

In addition to all the above points, you also need to choose the baseboard according to the method of fastening. In general, they can be attached to the wall or to the floor. But when laying laminate, parquet, parquet boards, boards - fastening only to the wall. Why? Because the listed materials have significant thermal and moisture expansion, therefore, a gap is left along the perimeter of the flooring - between the edge of the flooring and the wall, which is closed with a plinth strip, but the flooring material is not fixed - it must move freely. This is only achieved when the plinth is attached to the wall. It only adheres to the floor, leaving the covering room for movement.

Elastic edges are no different. Neither in color nor in texture

To prevent dust and debris from getting under the bar, use an elastic sealant. It remains mobile even after drying, so it leaves freedom of movement for the floor covering. The second option is strips with rubberized edges. Very convenient and practical.

There are several ways to attach skirting boards:

• Through. The simplest and most reliable, but not the most beautiful.
• Gluing. It’s also not difficult, but it’s only possible with smooth walls and not with all models of skirting boards.
• Secret. There are at least three options:
• the base part is attached to self-tapping screws/dowels, which are covered with a decorative strip;

  
  This is just a secret fastening. A good model that is easy to install yourself

on clips;

• on the guides.

Mounting on guides (top left) and clips (bottom right)
With a hidden mount, not everything is so simple.
This is only possible with smooth walls and floors. The simplest and most reliable is when the base is mounted on the wall. As a rule, these are models with a cable channel. In models with clips and guides, the reliability of fixation depends on the design. And it is worth considering that after removing the bar from the mount several times, it will have to be replaced - the groove becomes wider than necessary for reliable fixation.

Production technology

Among the variety of presented types of finishing products for the floor, plastic skirting confidently occupies its niche. According to the manufacturing method, plastic panels can be divided into the following types:

1. Hard bar. For production, foamed PVC is used, which has increased hardness and fragility. This material requires careful handling during installation. The price of a hard plastic plinth starts from $0.6 per linear meter.
2. The panel is of the same rigidity, but hollow inside. The most budget version of the plank. The price of such planks is from $0.4 per linear meter. Such skirting boards are used when carrying out renovation work in commercial premises and offices.
3. Medium hardness panels. The highest quality option for PVC planks. Their flexibility allows you to mount the material on rounded protrusions or carefully decorate noticeable unevenness in the floor or wall. The price of such a plinth will be from $1 per linear meter.

How to choose by size

First of all, you need to take care of the width. The plinth must cover the technological compensation gap. It is better if its width is at least 5 mm larger. They can be from 3-4 cm to 15 cm in height. So the choice is quite large. So which skirting board size should you choose? The width is clear. There is no longer a gap. What about height? You need to look at the interior and what role you assign to it.

The size of the baseboard depends on the proportions of the room and how much you want it to stand out

It's worth choosing a low one if you don't want to draw too much attention to it. If the plinth strip is just a detail, and not the “main player” in the interior, low or medium height - up to 5-6 cm - is what you need. If they are assigned an important role in the interior, then they are made tall - about 10 cm and above. But high baseboards with low ceilings or in small rooms are not the best choice. In general, you need to look at the proportions of the room, but you can never go wrong with average ones.