Six inches by twenty four
All three pieces are 6x24, which is a generous base height in a long, manageable length.
Six inches is taller than a standard painted baseboard and reads as deliberate rather than minimal. Twenty four inches is as long as a piece of half inch marble can comfortably be handled, and it also means the joints around a room fall at wider intervals than a shorter piece would allow.
Half an inch of solid stone
These are 1/2 inch thick, which is roughly half again the depth of the pressed porcelain bases sold elsewhere in the catalog.
The depth is what remains of the block after the profile is milled into the face. It also decides how far the base stands off the wall, which matters where a door casing meets it: the casing is usually thicker and the base stops against it, but a flush detail needs the figure settled first.
Polished, all three
Every piece here is polished, which is a different decision from the honed finish a limestone trim range carries.
A marble holds a polish where a limestone does not, and on a base the polish does something specific: it catches light along a horizontal line at floor level, which draws the bottom edge of the room and makes a wall read taller. A honed base disappears instead.
The perimeter is the quantity
A base is the only trim piece bought by the length of the walls rather than the length of an edge.
That number is larger than people expect and it grows quickly in a room broken by alcoves, chimney breasts and doorways, since every reveal adds two returns. Porcelain base sets out the arithmetic and covers the pressed alternative.
The stones here
A beige, a brown and a gray, in the Macchiato, Oscuro and Obispo series.
Those are marbles rather than color words, and on a base that matters for the same reason it matters on any trim: the piece runs the entire perimeter of the room against the floor, which is the longest continuous comparison anything in the room makes. Marble moldings carries the other profiles.
The outside corner is the test
A base runs into corners constantly, and an outside corner is where the material shows what it is.
A pressed porcelain base is finished on its face only, so an outside corner either needs a purpose-made piece or a mitre cut through the body. A solid stone base can be mitred anywhere along its length and the cut shows the same marble, which is the practical advantage of a piece that is the same material all the way through.
Where a stone base belongs
The bottom of a tiled or plastered wall in a bathroom, a hall, an entry or any room where the floor is stone and the base should be too.
It is also the answer in a wet room, where a painted wood baseboard at floor level is the wrong material in the wrong place. Moldings gathers the trim from every material.
