Imagine this – you’ve just installed a gorgeous prefinished floor. Everything is looking great and your customer loves it. You start to install the moldings to finish the job, but the moldings you pull out of the box aren’t a perfect match to the flooring boards you are installing them next to. Now a $50 trim piece is going to hold up final payment on a $5,000+ job!

Sound familiar? This is an all too common issue with prefinished flooring moldings. Moldings that stand out from the boards they are installed next to can cause complaints, delays, and cost you money.

This common problem doesn’t have to be the norm!

Wood flooring is of course, a natural product and whether it is White Oak or Walnut, every board will be unique in some way. This makes matching trim pieces and moldings more of an art than a science. Stain is formulated to match a certain overall color, but it can’t take into account all the variation that may be present in a hardwood floor. The same thing that people love about a hardwood floor – a natural, sustainable floor covering – can also cause headaches when it comes to matching trim pieces.

The simple solution to matching moldings

The best way to ensure that the moldings you install work great with your floor is to find boards that match your moldings before installation. This simple step will greatly reduce the chances of your moldings standing out from the boards around them. It may sound like common sense, but here is what you’ll need to keep in mind to make it happen:

Know what transition pieces you’ll need

We provide several formats of moldings and trim pieces for our prefinished flooring collections. Each piece has a specific function, and some may be used in multiple ways. Our Products page includes profiles of all our available molding pieces.

Know which direction the boards will be running next to your moldings

If your molding or trim piece is parallel to the flooring boards, you may only need to look for a few flooring boards that are the best match for your trim piece. If the boards are perpendicular or at an angle to your trim piece, then you’ll like be looking for a lot more.

Plan ahead to have the flooring and moldings at the job site

Making sure all materials are at the job site prior to installation gives you the opportunity to acclimate the wood appropriately, inspect everything for quality and appropriate color in the lighting of the house, and get the homeowner to sign off on the color of the flooring and moldings together before installation.

Set your matched flooring boards and moldings aside

Once you’ve found the boards that work best with your moldings, wrap them up and set them aside with the moldings they will be installed next to. This will make sure you or your installers don’t accidentally use those boards somewhere else during installation.

Guarantee you never install a bad molding

Taking some extra time at the beginning can save you a lot of time and money in the end, and will give you the peace of mind that the floor will look great for your customer and be work you can be proud of. Getting your homeowner to sign off on the color of the floor and moldings ahead of time will guarantee you don’t have a $50 molding holding up final payment on a $5,000 job.