MDF, softwood, hardwood - the right material for your room
MDF (medium-density fibreboard) is the workhorse of modern skirting. It's stable, knot-free, takes paint beautifully, and comes in a huge range of profiles and heights. For most rooms - bedrooms, living rooms, hallways - moisture-resistant MDF (MRMDF) is my first recommendation. It won't warp, it machines cleanly, and once it's painted you can't tell it from timber.
Softwood skirting (typically primed red deal or pine) comes into its own in older period homes where you need to match a specific profile. I can get bespoke knives cut to reproduce Victorian and Edwardian profiles exactly - essential for Grade II listed work in Southport's conservation areas.
Hardwood skirting - oak, ash, walnut - is for the showpiece rooms. Left unpainted and lacquered, it's a statement. I use it mostly in period restorations and high-end living areas where the skirting is a design feature in its own right.
Profile and height - the two decisions that matter most
Skirting height should match the proportions of the room. Victorian and Edwardian homes - which describe a huge chunk of Southport's housing stock - were built with 170mm and 195mm skirting as standard. When previous owners replaced that with 70mm pencil-round in the 80s and 90s, the rooms lost their sense of proportion. Reinstating 170mm torus or ogee makes an instant difference.
For newer builds I'd go 120mm or 145mm. Anything smaller tends to look like an afterthought. For bathrooms and utility rooms I'll often go with a clean square-edge MDF and silicone-seal the top - it handles steam better than mitred profiles.
As for profile: torus is the classic Victorian rounded profile, ovolo is the Edwardian quarter-round, ogee is more elaborate, bullnose is the contemporary choice. For new-plaster jobs I'll bring sample lengths round so you can see each option against your walls before you commit.
The fitting details that separate good from great
Three things give a good skirting job away, all three get attention on every job: scribed internal corners, mitred externals, and a caulked top edge.
Internal corners should be scribed - one piece cut square, the other cut to match its profile exactly with a coping saw. 99% of builders mitre internal corners because it's faster. Mitres open up over time as timber moves and the building breathes. Scribed corners stay tight through heating-cycle changes.
External corners are 45° mitres, glued, pinned and caulked if there's any suggestion of a gap. For walls that are out of plumb (which is most of them in old Southport houses) I'll adjust the mitre angle to suit rather than forcing the skirting to lie flat.
The top edge gets caulked before painting, not because it was fitted poorly but because walls are never perfectly straight. A thin bead of decorator's caulk along the top gives that crisp, seamless look every time. Pins go into a stud or behind-dot-dab bonding dabs, never into bare plasterboard mid-bay.
