What kind of wainscoting suits a Craftsman bungalow?

Plain, flat and square, capped with a plate rail. Craftsman interiors used simple frame-and-panel or battened wainscot with no moulded detail, and the plate rail on top is part of the design rather than an addition. The ornate raised-panel dado that suits a Victorian dining room looks borrowed in a bungalow, and it is the most common wrong turn in these houses.

How do you know how high the original wainscot was?

Usually from evidence still in the room. A ghost line under later paint, a surviving section behind a radiator or inside a closet, or an intact run in an adjoining room will give us the height and the section. Where nothing survives, plate rail height in this housing stock is fairly consistent, and we will tell you where we are working from evidence and where we are making a judgement.

Port Huron, St Clair County, MI

Wainscoting in Port Huron, MI

Name: Maceri Woodworking
Address: 33628 Bayview Dr, Chesterfield, MI, 48047, US
Telephone: (586) 823-2887
Price range: $$

Craftsman houses used wall panelling as a matter of course, and it looked nothing like a Victorian dado. In a Port Huron bungalow the dining room typically had a plain panelled or battened wainscot running up to a plate rail, in flat stock with square edges and no moulding at all.

Reinstating that is one of the most transformative things that can be done in these houses, because the plate rail height sets a horizontal line the whole room is proportioned around, and a room that has lost it feels subtly wrong in a way people struggle to place. We build it as it was originally built — real stiles and rails in flat stock, square-edged, capped with a proper plate rail with its bracket detail, stained or painted according to what the rest of the house does. Board and batten in the same plain register suits stair walls and entry halls. What we avoid here is the moulded raised-panel dado that belongs a few streets away in the nineteenth-century houses; in a bungalow it fights everything else in the room. In those older houses, of course, we build exactly that, matched to any surviving original panelling. The layout in both cases is set out against the actual wall, so stiles land evenly and no panel finishes short in a corner, which is the giveaway on a kit installation.

We look for surviving evidence — ghost lines, a section behind a radiator, an intact run in another room — before designing. Components are milled at our Chesterfield shop to match what the house already has.

Port Huron is about thirty miles from our Chesterfield shop, at the north end of the river run we work every week.

Wainscoting questions from Port Huron homeowners

What kind of wainscoting suits a Craftsman bungalow?: Plain, flat and square, capped with a plate rail. Craftsman interiors used simple frame-and-panel or battened wainscot with no moulded detail, and the plate rail on top is part of the design rather than an addition. The ornate raised-panel dado that suits a Victorian dining room looks borrowed in a bungalow, and it is the most common wrong turn in these houses.
How do you know how high the original wainscot was?: Usually from evidence still in the room. A ghost line under later paint, a surviving section behind a radiator or inside a closet, or an intact run in an adjoining room will give us the height and the section. Where nothing survives, plate rail height in this housing stock is fairly consistent, and we will tell you where we are working from evidence and where we are making a judgement.