Use Trim to Modernize a Traditional Home — or Vice Versa

In the same way a pair of earrings or the right watch can change the impression we give off with an outfit, a home's trim can give a modern twist to a traditional home or add a cozy, traditional feeling to a more contemporary space. The color, shapes and little details of window, door and baseboard trim can help a room bridge eras and gain flexibility and appeal.

The gorgeous trim-out in this modern kitchen addresses the question, "How do I help my home walk that fine line between past and present?"

The look subtly blends narrow dark interior steel mullions and white wood picture frame molding to guide the identity of this kitchen successfully to a fresh yet traditional feel.

The details and color could be read as traditional or modern. The blend does a bang-up job of invoking the past while hinting at a clean, modern style of the present.


Simple bordering picture-frame molding could make these windows feel completely modern, but ending the side trim at a flat crown at the top speaks to both traditional design elements and a modern aesthetic. Further balancing traditional and contemporary are the divided-light French casement windows. Single large panes would have left this room with a much more modern feel.


This fun baseboard shape has the profile of a nice bordeaux, and is reminiscent of traditional Victorian baseboards, complementing the wainscot and traditional cabinet pulls above. But the lack of frills and the square groove at the top anchor this firmly in the present.


The well-worn wood floors here connect to the walls with very simple flat-stock baseboard trim. In fact, the whole home style here reflects a transitional mentality by surrounding the traditional four-panel doors with flat stock trim that dies smoothly into the baseboard — with no traditional plinth-block at the bottom.

The reductionist take on the traditional trim enables the owners to move this historic farmhouse in a more modern direction without making the interior feel disconnected from the era of the original home.


Ditto.


When extending your thinking from window, door and baseboard trim to cabinets, you'll often see Shaker-esque styles dotting the transitional landscape.

These kitchen cabinets are a great example of how the Shaker style can be interpreted through a modern lens — with full-overlay doors substituting for the classic inset cabinet doors and the raised portion of the doors being much wider than usual — giving an unmistakable modern edge to a very classic style.


Here again, a wider-style Shaker door, flat-stock crown and lack of a footed detail to the cabinets puts this kitchen into a much more modern space while leveraging a style rooted in the 19th century.


Flat-stock baseboard set at the depth of the wall board and nearly nonexistent window trim nevertheless still allow a hint of tradition in this space.


On the outside of this home, the designer effectively combines traditional style — a columned porch with wood railing and tongue-and-groove ceiling — with a contemporary, clean-line aesthetic.

The railing has been reduced to its most simple rectangular elements, and the columns to simple square-profile towers with simple baseboards. This gives them human scale and a beginning (at the porch) and an end (at the ceiling).

More: Do You Live in a Minimalist Traditional House?

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