Hard wood floor edging / beading options

[Monica101]

I am choosing 50sqm of laminate or hard wood floor at the moment for the bottom floor of the house. There are lots of nice ones and no problems with finding one I like, but all the beading looks awful!

Has anyone got any alternatives they put down which look better.

I know taking the skirting boards off is an option but it is a 1930's house and it will all need plastering if i do this. Is it really the only option for a nice finish?

We had beading with our laminate floor and it never looked good. We now have engineered oak and had skirtings taken off. I thought our Victorian walls would need re plastering but it was fine. We replaced the original Victorian 9 inch skirtings with similar and it just fitted back on. Looks so much better

Beading is awful. We had it in one bathroom and it was a major mistake. Take off the skirting boards. You will hate the beading forever if you have it!

Can you get white beading to match the skirting boards?

I bought plain wooden beading in a shape I liked and painted it white to match the skirting boards. This looked better than the specially designed beading imho and was much cheaper!

Although I do have to say that taking the skirtings off makes for a much better finish.

We replaced the horrible edging with 1.5cm diameter fine rope. The sort that some curtain tie-backs are made from. Bought long lengths of it from a huge curtain shop and it wasn't expensive. Looks fab.

We have white flooring scotia. It looks really good, much nicer than beading. It was recommended by the guy who laid our bamboo floor. He hated beading too!

I wonder how much the extra cost will be for skirting too! I am leaning towards getting it done but agh the mess and trouble.

Quickstep seem to do a cover for skirting boards. Has anyone seen this, it sounds good in theory but I'd rather see it in real life first.

Interesting about the rope finish, it sounds quite subtle. I have white beading at the moment and I agree it is 10 times better than the wood beading as it blends well with the skirting in some rooms. The squarer the room the better I've found it looks.

Probs not what you want to hear but I agree, skirting removed and flooring under is much better. What if you went for deeper skirting? This may mean you don't have to replaster and tbh the cost to re plaster would be minimal if needed

Would have loved to remove skirting boards but we couldn't due to cost.

We did however get white beading. Looks like it's part of the skirting board (as long as they are white too), far better than the not quite colour match we had last time.

Sorry for rubbish pic.

How high is your current skirting? That tells whether you could afford a little plaster damage and replace with deeper skirts. If your skirts are already deep and/or you want to keep them then why not try taking them off in just one room as a test. 50m2 is a decent area so you want to get it right.

That does look good Ihatemytoes, your eye doesn't catch the beading.

My skirting is 18cm (7 inches) high, I think deeper skirting may look too high. Perhaps another inch on the skirting would be ok.

I'm going to get some quotes for both. I am thinking of the quickstep at £29 a square metre and then all the fitting, underlay, skirting or beading on top!