Make Your Plain Wall Stand Out With TikTok's Brilliant Box Molding DIY

Large, boring walls can be one of the most challenging things when decorating a home, particularly the walls above large pieces of furniture like sofas and entertainment consoles. Often, artwork and other accents can seem too small, too large, or out of scale with the room. Box moldings, or frame moldings, can be a great way to add a unique architectural accent to the walls that doesn't call too much attention, yet provides a more textured, visually interesting surface. TikTok user @kristinmariehome recently showed off how she employed box moldings on an otherwise uninspired wall above her sofa with beautiful results using several pieces of trim, small nails, and paint. The result was an architecturally unique wall element that elevated the entire room instantly while looking like it had always been there. 

Box moldings often give a Parisian vibe to many spaces, due to their ubiquitous in older European apartment buildings and homes in Europe, where they were a hallmark of pre-1900s buildings. These slender strips of molding were often placed in every room and accented by other lower-wall moldings, wainscotting, and crown molding around the top of the room. 

To create her box molding-covered wall, @kristinmariehome measures out the wall and how large she would like her frames to be by creating the shapes and placement in tape first. She then cuts the wood moldings down to size, mitering them at the corners to allow the pieces to snugly fit together before using small finishing nails to adhere them to the wall. After they are attached, she uses caulk to fill in gaps around the molding before painting it all the same color as the wall.

Thin moldings are budget-friendly to buy from home retailers like Lowes and Home Depot, and boast various thicknesses and shape designs. Many retailers will also cut longer moldings down to size for you in-store if you do not have access to the saw at home. There are also pre-fab molding kits, like this one from Home Depot, that are already cut into shaped or sized pieces and ready to hang. Peel-and-stick wood or PVC options (available from Amazon) are great if you want to add this accent to a rental space. Simply remove the moldings when you move out. 

Box moldings are great for incorporating an architectural element painted in the same color as your wall for an all-in-one look. Or you can paint the moldings another color, like white, to create contrast and visual interest on a darker wall. Moldings are also great as a way to define spaces. Hang artwork in their confines or your favorite wallpaper, a DIY project is great if you don't want to paper a whole wall. Use them as a way to create distinct zones in an open-concept or studio apartment.

Box moldings are also great in spaces that need a little texture and variation but may not lend themselves well to artwork and other decor, like narrow hallways, entryways, or stairway walls. Not only perfect for walls, you can also attach them to the ceiling for an alcoved ceiling effect, which looks stunning when combined with ceiling medallions or crown moldings, instantly granting an old Parisian apartment aesthetic to even the most modern rooms. Box molding is also great for making outdated flat doors look more fresh and luxe.