Why suffer blank boring walls? As a team of pros proves, easy-to-make molding frames can dd style and architecture to rooms of most any style.
Photos by Meagan Larsen.

Wall frames probably bring to mind the paneled entries and living rooms of stuffy traditional homes. But as the team at Ezra Lee Design + Build recently proved in a new Lehi house, these easy-to-make features suit most any style, even those that lean modern. “We created a modern house and added farmhouse adaptations that included wall frames,” says Senior Interior Designer Landon Taylor, describing the panels he and his colleagues Ezra Lee and Megan Schaer created.

They fashioned them from applied molding and integrated them into the entry, living and dining areas of the home’s open floor plan.

“The frames transformed empty wall space and helped us connect the home’s modern and farmhouse styles,” Taylor explains. The panels also expand the visual impact of framed art pieces and anchor vignettes that serve as head-turning focal points. The good news is that applied molding frames are simple to create. Getting them right, however, takes a heavy dose of design know-how. Fortunately, Taylor was happy to share some of his with us.

PLACEMENT

“We positioned all of the frames similarly on the walls to make them look more modern than the mismatched versions you’d see in farmhouses,” Taylor says. To accomplish this, he and his team located the bottoms of all of the frames 18 inches from the floor and aligned their tops with nearby window and door frames. “Rather than adding more lines to the space, this accentuated those that already exist, making the design more streamlined,” he says.

Because many of the frames are visible from the center of the great room, this consistent placement also helped foster a unified, uncluttered décor. The team determined the widths by allowing 12 to 15 inches of empty wall space outside of the frames’ sides to give them breathing room, Taylor explains. “We made them as large as can be without letting them look cramped.”

MOLDING

“We chose stock molding that was beefy enough to create shadows and suit the large scale of the frames,” says Taylor. The selected molding measures 1 1/2 inches wide and 3/4 inch deep. “Because we wanted them to look like true picture frames, we chose molding with a profile that’s deep on one edge and shallower on the other, rather than a symmetrical profile on both edges.” The team attached the molding with carpentry nails and finished them with wood filler and caulk.

COLOR

“I credit much of the frames’ impact to the contrasting colors that we chose,” Taylor says. The team selected a warm, light-toned gray for the insides of the frames. “We pulled the gray tone from the color of the kitchen’s perimeter countertops,” he explains. This decision helps establish the great room’s cohesive color palette. The gray tone contrasts with great room’s white walls as well as the brighter white, semi-gloss paint used on the frames’ molding. 

See more framing ideas here!