I painted all my bedroom trim, baseboard, and crown before install. To me, since the ceilings were so high, it was MUCH easier. One thing to check. Does your wood have knot holes? Despite my urging, my GC brought pine that had knot holes, the best for the price I could afford, and I primed with ordinary primer then painted with an off white satin finish. Well, it didn't take long before those knot holes bled through. Make sure you use a primer especially made to cover knot holes (can't think of the name right now). I had to go back and touch up the trim and baseboard knot holes with the special primer and repaint with another finish coat. That was three years ago and yellow spots are still appearing. :(

Grab a can of Cabinet Coat in white. It's just "white". Try it and see how you do painting with it and if you like "white". It's a very simple solution but sometimes super simple is the right answer.

My prinicipal, first story, rooms are 8'9" high. My skirting boards are roughly twice the height as the width of the window and door casings in each room. In the main reception rooms the skirting boards are a hair under 12 inches tall. On the second floor, the same relationship between door casing and skirting prevails and they just under 9 inches high. Stylistically, the profiles of the casings and the top edges of the skirting board are identical in an individual room, though vary somewhat from room to room downstairs. The second floor details are simpler than downstairs, and all the same in all but the most humble of rooms (storerooms, really). Skirting board of this height in rooms of nice but not overly high by modern, or Southern, or two-story foyer-type house standards may seem like too much of a good thing. But I find that they lend a nice visual "weight" to the lower walls and having them match the door casing patterns makes for a visual unity and calmness. The larger rooms always had 12" high wall paper border above a picture hanging rail, but no formal cornice. The trim is original to 1849/1850 when the house was built. The house style is a late-period, vernacular version of Greek Revival farmhouse built (and paid for) by a mature and prosperous couple to house their 40-ish bachelor son and his new, and quite young, bride. I suspect that the somewhat anachronistic. and the by-then a bit passe, style of this new house in '49-50 stems from the fact that it was chosen and erected by older folks in their taste, even if the bride who was to live there was much younger (almost young enough to be their granddaughter.) I have often wondered if she chafed at having her house designed, and furnished, for her in such an old-fashioned style. Perhaps she was more mature than I was at her age, and perceptive, too, to the fact 150 years later these style differences would smooth out. Maybe a hundred years from now people will aspire to a mixed-up fin de siecle retro look of avocado appliances, black granite, with white subway tile and frameless shaker cabs. A combination of details that today would drive most of us into a renovating frenzy, or at least to the appliance store!

Trim and cabinets don't have to match, but matching whites can be very challenging so it's often a smart choice to use the same color. I'd paint them Alabaster as well, it's a nice color