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Like many interior designers, Lucinda Sandford has lots of inspiration “parked in her brain.” One of the ideas she was constantly noodling on? Delicate, beaded-style plaster molding. She remembers first spotting it on the ceiling of a friend’s bedroom in Ireland. “It was like a pearl necklace and just so charming,” says the London-based creative. She didn’t find an opportunity to re-create it until she was brought on to decorate an apartment in the south of the city and was met with an underwhelming hallway.
Sandford decided to apply her personal version of the beaded cornice to the internal doors to instantly elevate the space. “We were on a budget, and specifying bespoke or glazed doors just wasn’t an option,” she says. Sandford had experience in applying decorative trim to cabinetry, but this time she opted for oversize bobbins (yes, like the turned wood balls seen on centuries-old furniture) from her go-to supplier, Decora.
The bobbins are sold in 60-inch strips that are flat on one side and rounded on the other. The designer first used them to line the doors to the bathroom and lounge. She then placed the trim around all the entry’s doorframes. The whole thing turned out to be a cost-effective move: “Adding the detail meant we could purchase very plain fire doors, which are more economical,” says Sandford. The same is true of the baseboards, which were cut from simple MDF sheets by a millworker and topped with a run of beading.
The application proved simple: They glued the raw wood moldings to the walls and used nails to secure them to the doors for extra security. However, it was the priming and painting that proved time-consuming. In hindsight, Sandford would have had the strips professionally spray-painted in the hue (Vert de Mer by Edward Bulmer) off-site to make the whole thing go by quicker.
For the final touch, the designer landed on a tonal blue wallpaper from Sandberg to make the painted trim really pop. “By just using the bobbin detail, we could keep maximum space between the top of the doorframes and the ceilings so a good amount of wallpaper is still exposed. And because everything flows through a continual use of color, it looks neat and tidy despite being very decorative,” she says.
The client loves her jewel-box entrance, and Sandford is hooked on the molding style: She’s already using it in another project, this time on a ceiling. “It’s also a great detail on the front on shelving,” she says, reminding us that the possibilities are seemingly endless.