Most of the painted trimwork I've seen has been white or off-white but if you try posting this on the Home Decorating forum you may get some responses. Folks there are really knowledgeable about paint and trim colors while we don't seem to discuss those things much on this forum.

Ok, good. I can't find the thread where I read about taping the wall, but the process was like this: - Paint the wall - Tape the wall at the baseboard or tuck in if you can - Light coat of wall paint on the tape to prevent bleeding - Paint baseboard - Remove tape I think I'm going to stick with with you folks are saying: paint trim first, tape trim, and then wall.

If "ranch trim" is really short with just a radius edge, then it's what we have in our living room, hallway, and a couple bedrooms. It's maybe 2" tall. It looks much better to paint that trim the wall color, which then means paint anything on the wall the wall color. Also, I wouldn't worry about trying to keep them consistent from room to room. The goal would be to paint them -- in each room -- in whatever way would help to camouflage them best.

Ok, so if neither is real wood, I wouldn't waste the time. Do you like the looks of the baseboards? the thinner look? normally 5" is what's in right now. you can find it (if you know where to shop) for about 35 cents a foot. and it's super easy to paint. it's already primed. Show this pic to anywhere that carries baseboards, and they'll get it for you These are mine. you can see most of them in this pic. the opening is also a larger, flat type of trim. I would do this around all of your interior doors. So the reason I say replace, is it looks better, and is easy to install if you have a few tools. Do you have any plans on changing out your flooring? If yes, then just wait and redo all the baseboards then. If no, then think about doing it now. If you want to spend all that time to paint what's there, you'll have to clean them very well, then lightly sand in order to take off the gloss, Clean them again to wipe down all the dust, then prime (you can't skip these steps) , lightly sand AGAIN, then you can paint. That's the only way you can keep them from peeling and looking good. BTW, if you ever change your flooring and DONT redo the baseboards, then you'll have to install shoe molding. see the little white molding up next to the baseboards? that's shoe. and it hides the gap up against the old moldings that's why I mentioned if you're going to change flooring, then remove old baseboards and take the new flooring up to the wall, and put new moldings right down on top of new floor.