Architrave & Skirting boards

[Danny Hardy]

I am currently fitting the skirting boards & architave in my house, the old skirting boards were 69mm in width which ive now ripped off and iv'e purchased similar new fully finished mdf skirting boards ready to go on.

The old architraves ive now ripped off were slightly smaller, more like 42mm in width, I don't seem to be able to find architaves in the same design, fully finished at 42mm to match the skirting boards, I can however find them in 69mm, is it normal to have skirtingboards & architrave the same width of should the architrave be slightly smaller like was previously installed in my home?

Thanks

 

[Deleted member 174758]

I think it isn't that significant. Whilst the skirting is often wider than the architraves, I've installed examples (especially on listed building refurbs) where the architraves were actually wider than the skirtings were tall as well as a few examples in modern buildings where they were the same width (normally because there was something like a shadow gap detail which run around the skirting then around the architraves, as in the example below - two of a series of sketchup drawings done so we could get approval for the joint details):

(Please forgive me if the following sounds a bit Laurence Llewelyn Jones-ish) So whilst it is convention to have skirtings which are wider than architraves, it is not written in stone, therefore have you tried putting a small piece of architrave in place then butting an offcut of skirting against it to see if you like the look? Or have you considered buying all skirting, then having a percentage ripped down to 42~45mm width (or doing it yourself for that matter) and installing that?