From DIYinfo.org
If you want to add a touch of class to your interior design schemes, today's wide range of decorative cornices, ceiling centres and other mouldings are the perfect answer.
Decorative mouldings of all kinds can be used to add the finishing touches to the interior of your home. Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian houses were all originally built with mouldings of some sort in most (if not all) rooms, but many have been damaged or removed over the years. Fortunately, replacing them is now a quite straightforward task, thanks to the wide range of reproduction mouldings now available.
Broadly speaking, a moulding is simply a decorative shape applied to a surface, perhaps to form a frame round a picture or over a window opening. Covings and cornices are fitted in the angle between wall and ceiling, to hide cracks as well as for their decorative value. Ceiling centres provide a focal point for a room, with or without a light fitting. Then there are fluted columns and corbels, perfect for supporting beams, and even complete moulded items like fire place surrounds and ornamental niches that are set into the wall surface to provide an attractive display for your treasures.
The cheapest and simplest type of moulding available is polystyrene coving, which has a plain quadrant profile. Plasterboard coving is similar in appearance but is larger in cross section. However, most truly decorative mouldings are made either from fibrous plaster (the traditional material) or from modern materials such as glass reinforced plastic (GRP) or rigid plastic foam.
Covings, cornices and panel mouldings come in a wide range of period styles and sizes. They are sold in lengths, and are simply bonded to the wall or ceiling surface with the appropriate type of adhesive; fibrous plaster types need screwing into place as well, since they are too heavy for adhesive alone. The same applies to decorative ceiling centres.
Complete fireplace surrounds can simply be mounted round the fireplace opening, with the centre in-filled with marble or tiles. Small niches are generally surface mounted, but deeper ones need setting into a recess cut in the wall surface.
Fireplace surrounds and decorative niches can be used as the perfect finishing touches for any room, as they can be decorated using different paint effects (finishes) like marble, stone or even exotic timber at a fraction of the price of the real thing.
Half and full pillars can be used indoors to add a period touch to through rooms, and out of doors they can provide an authentic looking porch or portico when teamed with a matching canopy.
As with fire surrounds and niches these to lend themselves well to different paint (effects) finishes.
