What size skirting board should I buy?

Primarily the skirting board size used in a room should reflect the dimensions and scale of the room its being installed in, so the skirting looks proportionate to the room. This means bigger and taller rooms look best with equally tall skirting, so the room looks in proportion. We would suggest skirting from 171mm/7" upwards in this case. Likewise smaller rooms require smaller skirting boards to stay in proportion, so we would recomend heights from the 121mm/5" mark and below as most suitable for smaller rooms.

Relating to the above point, the era of a building can also influence which skirting board size you should buy. Period properties are generally able to take larger skiritng board sizes as they were constructed with larger room sizes and ceiling heights. In contrast todays average ceiling height is 2.4m which is more proportionate with a middling skirting board size between the 121mm/5" and 171mm/7" sizes. Differing again, buildings constructed from 1950's to 1970's often featured very small skirting between the sizes to rebuild Britain after WW2 as cheaply as possible. These would have been 69mm/3" to 96mm/4" skirting heights, however it could be questionable whether you want to imitate the trands of these decades!