Hardwood Mouldings

What are hardwood mouldings?

Hardwood mouldings are machined from solid timber rather than pressed board. They take a crisp arris, they can be sanded and refinished years later, and they hold a painted edge without the softness you get at the corners of a softwood profile. Ours are cut from American tulipwood — stable, close-grained and happy under paint, which is why it has been the joinery trade's paint-grade hardwood for decades.

Solid wood, MDF or softwood?

Most timber mouldings sold in the sheds are pine: cheap, knotty and easily dented. MDF is the better buy for a painted finish in an ordinary room — it costs less, never moves, and painted up nobody can tell. Solid hardwood earns its place where the moulding takes knocks, where a period property deserves real timber, or where you want the option to refinish rather than replace. If painted MDF is the right answer for your job, see the MDF skirting boards.

Period mouldings, four ways

These are period mouldings in the proper sense: each of the twenty profiles is taken from a Victorian, Georgian, Edwardian or contemporary original and then run across every moulding in the range, so the same line carries round the room — skirting boards, architrave, dado rails and panel moulding.

What it costs to set up a profile

Each profile has to be tooled before anything is machined, so a one-off £120 set-up charge applies per profile per order — not per length — and is waived entirely once the order reaches £500. Ordering the skirting, architrave and dado rail in a single profile incurs it once. The set-up fee page sets out how it is applied.