Adding Mouldings Solve Big Empty Wall Dilemmas

Adding mouldings is a popular design solution these days for filling big empty walls. I recommended this for one of my July Instagram Q&A’s and I have a project where we are doing this in rooms with 16’ high ceilings.

Let’s take a look at both.

Here’s one of my past projects where we added these mouldings on a tall, curved stair wall and then applied wallcovering inside the boxes. It is an effective treatment for tall and oversized walls.

Applied mouldings and wallcovering on this curved tall stair wall add interest and eliminate the need for wall decor. carlaaston.com

In this Q&A, the family had just moved into their home and had lots of walls to fill at the stair and on the second floor.

Vast, open wallspace in the upstairs hallway.

Tall wall at the stair needed some kind of treatment or decor too.

How to treat this tall wall?

Her question was “What do I put on these walls?”

Here was what I recommended.

You can’t just do 5000 pieces of art or family photos. That works in castles in Europe where they’ve been getting their portraits painted and hung on the walls for centuries.

If you’re just starting out in a home and don’t have a lot of art or wall decor, choose one wall to focus on to start and then build from there.

Since the stair wall is two story, I recommended they do applied moulding in some big boxed shapes. Then do some subtle wallcovering in the boxes to add pattern and interest. That covers the largest empty space.

Then she could add some family photos in a gallery style look on the opposite wall, in the upstairs hallway.

Adding Mouldings To Tall Dining Room Walls

This project is a new build that is currently under construction. The ceilings in the dining room didn’t start out at 16’-0” high, but as windows were selected and exterior elevations were developed, the ceiling height grew.

While we were originally considering wallcovering for these walls, at this height, it would have been lots of material.

Instead, we opted to apply mouldings to the walls and coffers to the ceiling to build out the room to feel more intimate and to avoid these big wall expanses.

I can’t wait to see these go up on the job. We’ve got a beautiful dark gray-blue paint color for everything in here and we are even considering a grasscloth wallcovering in the tops of the coffers.

New build dining room sketch with applied mouldings | carlaaston.com

New build dining room sketch with applied mouldings | carlaaston.com

See more large walls that got this kind of treatment recommendation in the posts below.