Hi there, Ah ditto with the 60's house! We seem to have a mix of either rooms with no coving or rooms with plain coving. My father wants me to replace it all with decorative ornate coving, but I feel that with the age & style of the house, a plain one looks less out of place and more elegant. Of course it's down to personal taste. The dining kitchen off our through lounge doesn't have any and I'm contemplating not putting it in at all. Not sure if this would look odd or not, but we had bi-folds in and it's quite a contemporary room so doesn't need it (if that makes sense) Another thing to consider is the height of the ceiling. Ours feel quite low and coving makes the walls shrink even more. If you have at least a good standard height then you could get away with them.

It really is for aesthetic purposes. I think traditonally cornicing and skirts were used to cover any flaws in the plaster where the walls met the ceiling/floors. It can also give a roundness to the room and avoid shadows where the wall and ceiling meet. On the flip side, if painted white it can give the appearance of a bigger ceiling ceiling and therefore shorter walls. Nowadays a lot of contemporary homes do not have coving. I think it depends on what you like, personally I love it in the right space. What do you mean by low beams btw?

These are lovely and I can see why you wanted to keep them. Unfortunately the chances of you finding an exact match 'off the shelf' are pretty slim. They were almost certainly produced using wet plaster in situ by a local craftsman using moulds and templates unique to them. So realistically your options are to either remove the remaining cornicing and choose something similar to replace (easy and relatively affordable). Or to find a company who will come out and create a custom template from one of the existing sections. They will then either create new sections and repair or remove completely and start from scratch. Fortunately you have enough of both the rose and cornice to do this if you want absolute accuracy. If you decide to replace with similar styles I would look for places that can provide 'wet' plaster as this is easier to work when installing. I've used this company before to order samples and they were very helpful. They also do a restoration service : http://www.victoriancornice.com/page.php?id=9&action=cct Her is a similar style cornice if you decide to replace: http://www.covingshop.com/dm3069-coving-late-victorian-edwardian-cornicing.html The rose looks quite unique though and probably would have been made out of several different components. It does have an 'adams' styling to it which may help you search for similar ones though.

Hi Mike, any standard coving (there are many options from expanded polystyrene to plaster & gypsum based products) will be absolutely fine. More important is to ensure it is well fixed, and that you use a good quality bathroom paint to resist mildew etc. If you have a period property, I'd certaily recommend spending a little extra to get a higher quality, period moulded coving with a little more detail than the average modern one. It might cost a little more, but the effect will be to give a much more luxurious feel for limited cost. Google period style coving and try some of the links.