Hello all….just thought I’d run this by you. I am doing a basement reno and the client has asked me to create a contemporary recessed panel look on the walls. The walls in question are 2×4 half-walls aprox. 4 1/2 ft. tall that are framed in front of a concrete pony wall.
I was simply going to insulate and drywall and then create a ‘recessed panelled’ look by using primed MDF (1×3 or 1×4) for the vertical/horizontal cross pieces. Also, I would like to make this a modern Shaker style so would prefer to create squares as opposed to rectangles.
Is there a formula I should be using so that the panels are appealing to the eye and are proportionate? The longest wall will run aprox. 20ft. with some 8ft sections also. Also, keep in mind these panels will be max. 4 1/2 ft tall.
I’d appreciate any help with this! Thanks in advance,
Mike
Replies
Can't go wrong with the golden section. Put on some music, grab some paper, a pencil, compass, ruler and a beer this evening and play around. That's how I start most of my designs.
Well, you had me until you said you wanted them to be square...
The usual rule I've seen applied for rectangular shapes at least uses the golden mean. I won't go into the math or history here (you can find that on the web), but roughly, it means the rectangle should be 1.61803399 times as high as wide. So if you have a wall that's 4 1/2 feet tall, you would make the panel (4.5 / 1.61803399) or 2 3/4 feet wide to be "pleasing to the eye".
I'm not sure how or if you could apply this to squares.
Other than that, try hard to make sure the walls divide evenly by whatever width square you end up using so you don't have partial panels if possible.
Enjoy,
-Sean
Edited 3/15/2005 12:03 pm ET by MaineWoods
Thanks for the replies...I dug out the graph paper and ran a couple of 'to scale' scenarios using different sized panels. I have to say the smaller the square the busier it became distracting from the clean, simple Shaker motif. I think I'll stick to larger panels trying to avoid a very small one at the end of the wall.
Mike