If you’d like to install crown moulding at your place, this article and video can help you do it better and faster. You’ll learn tips that I’ve found helpful over four decades of working with wood, including a recent innovation that solves one of the main challenges of installing crown moulding well — especially if you’re doing the work by yourself.
After reading the installation tips below, check out the Q&As at the end.
Tip #1: Choose your width
This might seem obvious, but no one can accurately decide on the ideal width of crown for a given room without trying samples in place. As you’re shopping, buy one length of several widths and styles, then have someone hold them up at the ceiling back home while you see what it looks like.
Besides varying widths, the different profiles of crown can have a big effect on the look of your room. Don’t cut these test pieces and you’ll be able to return them to the store later, when you pick up all the moulding you’ll need for the entire job.
You’ll find 5¼-inch width crown moulding makes a dramatic change to rooms with eight- to 10-foot ceilings. For ceilings 10 to 12 feet high, you may want to consider crown moulding with a 6¼-inch width.
Tip #2: Decide on painted or stained moulding
Choosing a finishing approach might seem like a strange thing to think about early on like this, but it’s essential. That’s because it’s much more challenging to install stained crown rather than painted crown.
Filler is one reason. Paint-grade crown allows the use of latex caulking to fill gaps invisibly before painting, so a tight fit on joints is much less critical than with stained trim. No filling is possible with stained trim of any kind, so you’ve got to be spot-on with all joints.
Cost of materials is another issue. Crown moulding destined to be stained needs to be milled from high-quality solid wood, which is much more expensive than the MDF or lower-grade woods that paint-grade crown is made from.
Tip #3: Obtain two essential tools
A mitre saw (also called a chop saw), offers the single biggest advantage you can give yourself when tooling up for crown installation. The ability to accurately cut trim at precise angles is key. Unless you like frustration, don’t even attempt to install crown without a big mitre saw at your disposal.
Some kind of cordless nailer is a huge advantage when installing, too. Sure, you could secure crown with hammer driven nails, but that’s a lot harder than it looks. Why? The simple reason is that it takes two hands to drive a nail, leaving no hands to hold up the crown conveniently. An air nailer needs only one hand to operate. In addition, air-driven nails don’t knock the crown around like hammer blows do, so accurate joint alignment is much easier.
Tip #4: Mark walls for nail location ahead of time
Marking for nail locations sounds simple enough, but it is rarely simple without help. That’s because underlying residential wall frames rarely offer all the wood you need for securing crown with nails. Sure, there will probably be some hidden framing wood available for nailing into, and this should be marked and made use of whenever possible.
But since all crown is held in place with finishing nails or brads driven into the underlying wood frame underneath the drywall, drywall alone can’t help. That’s where an invention by a Florida dentist named Athas Kometas helps a lot.
Kometas didn’t like the way crown moulding installations were often a hit-and-miss affair, all for lack of underlying nailing surfaces. That’s why he invented something called EZCrown. It’s strips of bent sheet metal backing that holds angled wooden nailing blocks. The sheet metal is easy to anchor to the wall, in turn making it easy to nail the crown moulding to the angled blocks.
This video shows EZCrown in action:
Kometas’s favourite method of marking block locations are those narrow sticky notes made to mark specific spots in books. These stickies cling well to the wall but peel off easily without leaving marks behind. Pencil marks work well also and can be painted over. Do not use pen.
Tip #5: Consider corner blocks
The trickiest part of crown moulding installation is getting the joints tight and this is why corner blocks were invented. They sit in the corners, eliminating the need to make angled cuts on trim. Simple square cuts are all that’s required. Sure, you still need to get the length of a given piece of crown correct, but this is a lot easier than getting a complicated compound angle correct as well as overall length.
Crown moulding Q&A
If you’re new to crown moulding, learn some useful basics with the most common questions people ask.
What is the purpose of crown moulding?
It’s a specific type of interior trim that’s typically found where ceilings meet walls or on the top end of cabinets. Crown moulding adds a lot of elegance and refinement to any room. It gets its name from the fact that it’s always installed up high in a room or on top of elegant furniture. Crown moulding is always angled, too. This makes the profile details easier to see and appreciate while standing on the floor.
Is it outdated?
Far from it. Crown moulding is a classic trim detail that’s been used for centuries in many parts of the world. And though it fell out of favour in the 1960s and ’70s, it began to come back in the ’80s and may be more commonly used today than at any other time in history. It’s easier and cheaper to install and looks fabulous.
What is the average cost of crown moulding?
This varies a lot depending on the width and shape of the crown chosen, and whether or not the installation is made to be painted or stained. You can expect to pay $5 to $25 per running foot of crown moulding installed.
What is the difference between moulding and crown moulding?
Crown moulding is just one specific type of moulding used inside homes and buildings to make the space look better. There are hundreds of different kinds of mouldings. Moulding like this is also sometimes called “trim.”
