Crown Moulding near you

Crown is chosen for scale as much as for shape. How far it reaches onto the ceiling and how far it drops down the wall matter as much as the profile itself. Tall ceilings and large rooms can carry a generous crown, while a heavy profile under a low ceiling in a small room tends to look crowded.

The material decides how heavy the crown is, how it takes paint or stain, how cleanly it cuts and how well it follows a wavy wall.

Crown sits at a fixed angle between wall and ceiling, known as its spring angle, and every cut has to respect it. Carpenters usually cut crown upside down and nested against the saw fence as if the fence were the wall, or lay it flat and cut compound angles. Either way, the moulding has to be held at the same angle all around the room, or the joints won't meet.

Few rooms are truly square, and ceilings dip, hump or slope, especially in older houses and toward the middle of long walls. Crown exposes all of it, because its top edge follows the ceiling and its bottom edge follows the wall. A skilled installer measures each corner angle instead of assuming a right angle, adjusts the copes and mitres to suit, and decides whether the crown should follow the ceiling or run straight with the gaps filled.

Small gaps along the ceiling are usually closed with caulk. Larger ones may call for drawing the moulding up with fasteners into backing, feathering a little compound onto the ceiling, or choosing a profile that hides more variation. On a very uneven ceiling, a slimmer or flexible crown follows the surface better than a stiff wood one. A ceiling that is visibly sagging, rather than merely uneven, needs attention before any trim goes up, as the ceiling repair page explains.

Most crown is painted, often in the same colour and sheen as the rest of the trim or the ceiling, which makes joints and small flaws easier to hide. MDF, polyurethane and paint-grade wood all look crisp under paint. Stained crown needs clear, well-matched solid wood, tighter joints and filler that matches the grain, since there's no paint to hide repairs, and it's usually chosen to match existing stained woodwork.

Crown shouldn't be designed on its own. It reads as a set with the baseboards and door casings, so their profiles and proportions should relate: a tall, ornate crown above slim, modern baseboards tends to look mismatched. When baseboards or casings are being replaced too, doing all the trim in one project makes it easier to match profiles, finish and sheen, and the trim and moulding page covers those pieces.

Many older homes have plaster cornices, run in place with a profile template or cast in sections, often alongside ceiling medallions. Damaged cornices can usually be saved: cracks filled, missing lengths re-run in place by a plasterer using a template cut to the existing profile, or sections recast from a mould taken from a sound piece. Swapping a plaster cornice for stock crown almost always changes the room's proportions and character.

Before any repair, the cause has to be dealt with, whether a roof or plumbing leak or movement in the ceiling. Decades of paint can clog a cornice's fine detail, and stripping it is delicate work. Health Canada says a home built before 1960 probably contains lead-based paint, so have the layers tested first and rule out heat guns and sanders.

The Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada, the national benchmark administered by Parks Canada, favour repairing original material and, when replacement is unavoidable, matching the original. For a cornice or original crown, that means repairing what survives, copying profiles exactly and keeping a sample of anything removed. In Quebec, the owner of a classified heritage building needs authorization before altering or repairing it, and municipalities can set rules for the properties they designate, so confirm your home's status before work starts.