Quarter Round

The gap it hides

A floating floor is laid with a gap at every wall so it can expand and contract. Baseboard covers most of that gap where it is fitted after the floor, but where the baseboard was already in place, or where the gap is wider than the baseboard overhangs, something else has to close the line.

Quarter round is that something. It sits in the angle between the floor and the baseboard, covering the gap while leaving the floor free to move behind it.

Quarter round and base shoe

Quarter round has a profile that is a quarter of a circle, equal in both directions. A base shoe is the same idea in a taller and narrower section, so it projects less into the room while covering the same gap.

Which reads better depends on the baseboard. A tall square baseboard takes either; a finer one usually looks better with the narrower section, since a fat quarter round below a delicate baseboard reads as an addition rather than part of it.

Around a room, and around everything in it

The length required is the perimeter of the room, less the doorways, plus every return around a chimney breast, a cabinet, a pipe and an alcove.

Those returns are what make the quantity larger than a quick measurement suggests, and they are also where the cuts are. A room with a plain rectangle of wall needs much less thought than one with four alcoves in it.

Corners, inside and out

Quarter round turns corners constantly, and the two kinds behave differently: an inside corner in an alcove and an outside corner around a chimney breast.

Outside corners are the ones that show, because they sit proud and catch the eye and the vacuum cleaner. A room with several of them uses more material and more care than its perimeter suggests.

Color: floor or baseboard

Quarter round sits between two finishes and can match either. Matched to the floor it reads as part of the floor and the baseboard appears to sit on top of it; matched to the baseboard, usually painted, it disappears into the wall.

Both are used and neither is wrong. What reads badly is a third tone that matches neither. Where a floor stops rather than meets a wall, the end cap is the profile instead. The flooring trim page covers the rest of the profiles a floor needs.