Panelling has become one of the most requested pieces of work in London and Surrey homes, and for good reason: it gives a flat modern wall architecture, it hides a multitude of sins in older plaster, and it photographs beautifully. It is also the easiest thing in a room to get subtly wrong. Set the rail too high and a low-ceilinged bedroom feels shorter still. Space the panels without thought and the eye reads the rhythm as an accident. The joinery can be immaculate and the room still feel off.
Almost all of that is decided before anyone picks up a saw. What follows is how we approach the planning, room by room, and how the panelling is then prepared and painted so it reads as one continuous surface rather than a collection of pieces stuck to a wall.
Proportion comes first
The starting point is always the room itself: ceiling height, the height of the skirting, where the windows and doors sit, and where you stand when you look at the wall. In a Victorian or Edwardian property the building usually tells you where things belong, because the original dado and picture rail heights were set in relation to generous ceilings and tall sashes. Where those features survive elsewhere in the house, following them keeps the new work coherent. Where they have been stripped out, the original heights can usually be read from ghost lines in the plaster or from a neighbouring room that escaped modernisation.
In modern houses and flats there is no such precedent, and the temptation is to copy an image from the internet at the height it happened to be built. That rarely translates. With a standard modern ceiling, panelling that sits too high visually compresses the wall; keeping the rail lower — comfortably below the midpoint of the wall — leaves a generous plain field above and makes the ceiling feel higher rather than lower. Above all, the panel widths and the gaps between them should be consistent, and the panels themselves should sit on a horizontal line that respects the skirting rather than clashing with it.
Two practical rules save most rooms. First, set out from the whole wall and adjust the panel widths so both ends finish equally — a half panel in one corner is the single most common giveaway of unplanned work. Second, decide early how the panelling meets fixed obstacles: sockets, radiators, alcoves, staircase strings and chimney breasts. Those collisions are far easier to design around on paper than to disguise afterwards.
The common styles, and where each works best
Framed dado and picture-frame moulding
The most versatile option: rectangular mouldings applied to the wall below a capping rail. It suits hallways, dining rooms, period reception rooms and staircases, works with almost any age of property, and adds bearing without eating floor space. It is also the most forgiving of an uneven wall, because the frames can be set to a line even where the plaster behind is not perfectly flat.
Shaker-style square panelling
Plain flat stiles and rails forming simple squares or tall rectangles, with no decorative moulding. Its restraint suits modern extensions, new builds and open-plan spaces where a traditional moulding profile would look applied rather than architectural. Full-height Shaker panelling works well behind a bed or in a hallway; half-height gives a cleaner, more contemporary reading than a classical dado.
Tongue-and-groove and beaded board
Vertical boarding is the informal option. It reads as cottage or coastal rather than classical, and it earns its place in utility rooms, boot rooms, cloakrooms and bathrooms where a hard-wearing lower wall is genuinely useful. The vertical rhythm exaggerates height, which is helpful in small rooms and less helpful in a tall Victorian hallway where it can look thin.
Slat and fluted panelling
Regular vertical slats or half-round fluting create shadow and texture and suit modern interiors, media walls and bedroom feature walls. They are the least period-appropriate of the options and best used deliberately on a single wall rather than run around a room.
How panelling talks to skirting, architrave and cornice
Panelling never exists on its own. It has to relate to everything else in the room, and the details where those elements meet are what separate joinery that looks original from joinery that looks added.
- Skirting: the panelling should sit above the skirting, not fight it. Where existing skirting is shallow and the panelling substantial, deepening the skirting keeps the visual weight at the bottom of the wall where it belongs.
- Architrave: panel stiles should stop cleanly against door architrave with an even margin, and the panelling depth should not stand proud of the architrave, which looks clumsy and catches the light awkwardly.
- Dado and picture rails: if a picture rail survives, the plain field between it and the dado capping is what carries the colour, so its depth needs to feel deliberate rather than left over.
- Cornice: heavier panelling below usually wants a cornice of matching presence above — the two together frame the wall, whereas panelling with no cornice can leave the top of the room looking unfinished.
- Radiators and electrics: rails set out to clear socket plates and radiator brackets look intentional; panels notched around them do not.
Choosing materials
For painted panelling, moisture-resistant MDF is generally the sensible choice: it is dimensionally stable, it has no grain or knots to bleed through, and its machined edges take a finish that timber struggles to match. Softwood moves with the seasons and shows its grain through paint, which is fine where a slightly softer, more traditional look is wanted but less predictable in a heated room. Hardwood makes sense where the joinery is to be stained or clear-finished rather than painted. In bathrooms, utility rooms and boot rooms the moisture-resistant grade matters, and the bottom edge needs to be sealed before it goes anywhere near a wall.
The other material decision is the adhesive and fixing method. Panelling that is bonded and pinned to a sound wall stays put; panelling fixed to blown plaster does not, so any loose substrate is dealt with first. On very uneven older walls we sometimes batten out and level the framework, because a flat plane beneath is what allows the mouldings to run true.
Preparation and painting: making the joints disappear
This is the stage that determines whether the finished wall reads as a single moulded surface or as a lot of separate pieces. It is also the stage that takes the longest, and it follows the same discipline as any other high-quality decorating job — much of it described in our article on why surface preparation decides how paintwork looks.
- Pin holes and screw heads are filled, allowed to shrink back, refilled where necessary and sanded flush, because a filled hole that has sunk will read as a dot in every raking light.
- Mitres and butt joints are filled and, where the two materials will move against each other, caulked with a flexible sealant so a hairline does not open up in the first heating season.
- The junction between panelling and wall, and between capping and plaster, is caulked to a clean, even line — this single detail does more for the finished look than any other.
- Cut MDF edges are sealed and primed, because bare machined edges drink paint and will otherwise dry to a different sheen.
- The whole assembly is primed as one surface, then de-nibbed between coats so dust and brush debris are not set into the finish.
- Finish coats are applied in a durable eggshell or satin appropriate to a wall that will be touched — flat matt on panelling looks lovely for a fortnight and marks thereafter.
Where the panelling is extensive, or where the profile is intricate, spraying gives the most even film across the mouldings; where it sits in a furnished, occupied room, brush and roller is usually the more practical choice. The trade-off between the two is covered in spray painting versus brush and roller. Either way, the wall above and the woodwork around it are decorated as part of the same job, so the panelling does not sit against tired plaster — which is why panelling and interior decorating are almost always planned together.
Getting it right for your room
What shapes any panelling project is the condition and flatness of the existing walls, the style and height chosen, the size of the room, the materials and finish specified, the complexity of the detail around windows, staircases and chimney breasts, and how easily the space can be cleared and accessed — which is why we set out panelling on site rather than from a plan alone. You can see how we approach panelling, mouldings and cornice work, look through rooms we have completed, check that we work in your part of London or Surrey, or ask for a free tailored quote and we will talk the proportions through with you in the room itself.