Very much so. Ours was just installed 2 days ago. We had the 3.5 inch baseboards which the old hardwoods were installed AGAINST. So they looked more like 3 inch. We ripped out hardwoods and baseboards and even though it meant ripping out all our shadow boxing (and redoing) we went with 4.5 inch baseboards and I think I would have been FINE doing 6 to be honest- as obnoxious as that sounds. But I needed to balance with my new chair rail.

So you can sort of see in this photo of my ripped up first floor- look to the hallway, that is 4.5 inch base with new shadowbox and old chair rail. The crown molding, old 3 inch now has a second piece of crown below it make it like 5 inch, but nothing has been painted and the floor are undone so its sort of hard to get the effect. But you should be really fine going with 4-5 inch base, IMO

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We have 6 1/4" baseboard in our rooms with 8' ceilings and 7 1/4" in the rooms with higher ceilings. It's just right!

I don't have a great picture of the trim but these might give you an idea.

{{!gwi}}

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juddgirl2 - Pretty home!

You have some really nice molding around the entryway into the T.V. room, too : )

I can see a hint of your crown molding in the first picture. What is the crown molding size?

-Laurie

Can't go wrong with 6" in 8' rooms and 8" in 10' rooms.

Thanks everyone for your beautiful pictures and advice! Your trim looks great. I'm going to buy my new 6 inch baseboards next week.

nollie - I think you'll be happy with the 6". Post pics when you're done!

Thanks, laurie. Our decorating is a work in progress, but I'm so happy the trim and painting is done! We didn't want to go too large on the crown, since some of our windows are high and I wanted extra detail on the top window trim and the archways. I think it's between 4-5" in the 8' rooms and larger in the great room and foyer.

Here a few pics that show the crown better (please ignore the unfinished fireplace - that's one of my many pending projects).

{{!gwi}}

juddgirl2 - Thank you for the additional pictures and your crown molding size. I am going to save this post for the future when we consider putting crown molding in our house.

Your fireplace is magnificent!! It looks great with the wall color, furniture & wood flooring.

nollie - when we shopped for baseboards, we couldn't find larger sizes at our local Home Depot or Lowes. We ended up going to a lumber store where the selection was really good. We also got the preprimed mdf type and are happy with it.
I agree with juddgirl- post pictures when done : )

-Laurie

Maybe because we have no furniture in yet, but the 5 1/4" baseboard above the wood on the 8 ft. walls with 3 something crown makes the walls look very short. Really wondering about going back to 4.25"

two answers

Yes, there are classical proportions used by architects that provide guidelines for baseboard ( base is 2/9 the height of the "pedestal") and crown ( a proportion of the total entablature), based on the height of the ceiling. The book "Get Your House Right" explains this in the first few chapters in a way that made it interesting.

You can buy 4 1/4", 5 1/4" base mouldings at your local lumber yard, and look at them in your rooms for a few days. When I replaced base for my friends we removed the mouldings in one room and installed temporary 5' sections in different sizes and profiles. This gave them a chance to "live with" a few base and crown choices for a week.

There are a wide variety of base moulding profiles (page 22), each is probably offered in several heights. Going to a real lumber yard will generally give you access to mouldings that are higher quality that those in the home stores.