How Important Are Skirting Boards For Wood Flooring

We pay a lot of attention to the way our wooden floors look and feel, to the way we maintain them in perfect condition and how often we re-coat the finish for durable protection, how we look after them and how we clean them. In fact, wood floors are an expensive investment and we want to keep it intact for the longest time possible to make this investment pay off. However, we often tend to neglect or forget some of the details related to wood flooring. As we already know, details are often more important than the big picture and they worth your attention and care too. Flooring accessories have the purpose of not only improving the appearance of a wooden floor by hiding and camouflaging gaps and other specifics of the arrangement of wood flooring, ensuring a sleek and put-together appearance of the floor. However, flooring accessories are also important for ensuring safety, comfort, functionality, lasting durability, hard-wearing power. Therefore, flooring accessories should be taken seriously too and treated with care and attention. 

One of the most commonly used and installed types of flooring accessory are skirting boards, also known as baseboards. Skirting boards have been around for many years and used as accessories to all types of real wood flooring, including solid wood, engineered wood, and parquetry. Skirting boards normally serve a couple of very important purposes. First of all, skirting boards have a purely decorative purpose, making the whole floor look sleek and completed, blending into the whole flooring structure for an even and uniform look, or contrasting the style of the wood floor for a touch of bold and unique style. Skirting boards are available in different designs and styles and you can choose the style that best fits your interior and floor. However, you can go for as simple as a skirting board that is just a wooden plank. No matter what style and design you fancy, the skirting board will be attached to the wall, following the perimeter of the entire room, usually being glued, nailed or screwed to the walls. By this, the skirting board does its second main purpose – to protect the wall from situations and accidents such as accidental knocks and bumps, from wear and tear caused by furniture pieces, vacuuming, mopping. Finally, skirting boards come in handy for hiding the expansion gap that is left between the wooden flooring and the walls. As you can tell by the name, expansion gaps are left to allow some additional room for the wooden planks to expand and contract, when exposed on moisture, humidity, temperature fluctuations, without getting broken or damaged.

In case you are planning a wood flooring project, no matter if it comes to the installation of a new floor or a renovation, repair, and restoration project, you definitely have to consider the skirting boards. Here is what to do:

Skirting Boards and Floor Renovation Projects

A wood floor renovation projects normally mean that you have already installed skirting boards in the room, where the project is planned. Now, the next important questions, in this case, is whether you want to leave the skirting boards attached to the wall, while the floor renovation, restoration, and repair process is happening, or you want to remove them for the time the process is running in order to protect them from accidental damages.

However, in case you decide to remove the skirting boards while a floor renovation project is running, there is a risk of taking away a whole lot of the wall’s plaster along with the skirting boards, especially in older houses. Therefore, many people and specialists will prefer to leave the skirting boards during a wood floor renovation project in order to prevent bigger damages. However, leaving the skirting boards can hide some risks of damaging them too. For example, sanding equipment can be very heavy and an accidental bump can break or seriously damage a skirting board.

Skirting Boards and New Wood Floor Installation Projects

When it comes to the installation of a new wooden floor, you have more flexibility and freedom of choosing new skirting boards too. You can choose and decide on the style and design that will fit your new floor and the interior style of the room. No matter what style and design of skirting board you choose to have installed, don’t forget that an expansion gap should be left between the floorboards and the walls to allow extra room for the natural movement of the floorboards.