Interior & Exterior Painting
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Finish Carpentry costs in Maryland
What trim and crown molding cost in Maryland
Trim is priced per linear foot, which makes it look simple. The number moves on profile, material, corner count and whether the walls behind it are straight.
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Quick answer
How much does finish carpentry cost in Maryland?
Crown molding in Maryland typically costs $7 to $20 per linear foot installed, and baseboard $4 to $12 per linear foot. An average 12×14 room runs roughly $400 to $1,000 for crown and $250 to $600 for baseboard. Profile size, whether the material is paint-grade MDF or stain-grade hardwood, and how many corners the room has are what move the price.
The numbers
Maryland pricing, broken down.
Almost no contractor site in this market publishes a number, which is exactly why the question has so much search demand and so little honest supply. These are the ranges we price to in Maryland, with the reason each one is a range and not a price.
Typical in Maryland
Crown molding, installed
$7 – $20 / linear ft
Baseboard, installed
$4 – $12 per linear foot
The low end is a simple 3¼-inch paint-grade profile in a square room. The high end is tall stacked base, or stain-grade material where every joint has to be perfect.
Crown molding, installed
$7 – $20 per linear foot
Priced above base for one reason: it is installed overhead against two surfaces that are rarely square to each other.
Stacked or built-up crown
$18 – $40 per linear foot
Two or three profiles combined for depth. Common in Maryland colonials and worth it in a formal room with height; oppressive in an 8-foot bedroom.
Door casing, per opening
$90 – $250
Both sides of the opening. Craftsman-style flat casing with a header sits near the top; a simple mitred colonial casing near the bottom.
Window casing, per window
$110 – $300
More than a door because of the stool and apron. A bank of three windows in one opening prices as three.
Wainscoting or accent wall
$12 – $30 per square foot
Board and batten at the bottom, picture-frame moulding at the top. Layout is most of the labour — spacing that is even to the eye rather than even on the tape.
Coffered or beamed ceiling
$25 – $60 per square foot
The most expensive thing on this page per square foot, and the most transformative in the right room. Needs a ceiling with height to spare.
Stair skirt, treads and risers trim
$120 – $350 per step
Every step is a scribe. There is no fast way to do this well.
Interior door slab hung and cased
$350 – $750 per door
Includes hanging the door, casing both sides and fitting hardware. A pre-hung unit into an existing square opening sits at the bottom.
Paint or stain finishing
$2 – $7 per linear foot
Separate from installation, and frequently the line that is missing when two quotes do not match. Caulk, fill, sand, prime, two coats.
Ranges, not quotes. Published 2026 and reviewed against work we are actually pricing in Maryland. What your job costs comes from a walkthrough — access, condition, height and finish level move a price more than square footage does. Estimates are free and in writing.
Coped or mitred — the question that tells you who you are hiring
On an inside corner, trim can be joined two ways. Mitring cuts both pieces at 45 degrees and butts them together, which is fast and looks perfect the day it is installed. Coping cuts one piece square into the corner and carves the second piece to the exact profile of the first, which takes several times longer.
The difference shows up in year two. Maryland houses move through a big humidity swing between February and August, and a mitred inside corner opens as it does — that thin dark line along every corner in a room is a mitred joint that has moved. A coped joint slides against itself and closes back up.
Ask any trim carpenter whether they cope inside corners. It is a fair question, the answer is short, and it tells you more about the quote in front of you than the price does.
Where trim earns its money in a Maryland house
Trim is the highest visible return per dollar in this whole set of guides, and it is not close. A room with proper casing, a substantial base and a crown reads as a finished, considered room. The same room with builder-grade 2¼-inch base and no crown reads as unfinished, no matter what has been spent on the flooring.
The best value order, if you are doing it in stages: baseboard first, because it is the most visible and the least expensive per foot. Then door and window casing, because builder-grade casing is what most obviously marks a house as builder-grade. Crown last, and only in rooms with the height to carry it — crown in an 8-foot bedroom lowers the room rather than lifting it.
One caution specific to this market: many Frederick and Montgomery County colonials already have a defined trim vocabulary. Adding a modern flat-stock craftsman casing to two rooms of a house full of traditional colonial profiles reads as a mistake rather than a choice. Match what the house already says, or commit to changing it everywhere.
Before you sign anything
What a real written quote should itemise
Ask every contractor for these in writing. Quotes only compare once they do — and Maryland law requires home improvement work over $500 to be under a written contract anyway.
- Linear feet, broken out by profile and by room
- Material grade — paint-grade MDF, finger-jointed pine, or stain-grade hardwood
- Inside corners: coped or mitred, in writing
- Whether filling, caulking and painting are included or separate
- Who supplies the material, and whether the profile is stocked or special order
- What happens where new trim meets existing trim
Want the number for your house?
Call and describe the job. You’ll get a straight answer on whether it’s something we do and roughly what it runs, before anyone books a visit.
(301) 524-1729
Priced by us, not a calculator
Finish Carpentry & Trim
What moves the number
Why two quotes on the same job land far apart.
Usually not because one contractor is expensive. Usually because they are pricing different work. These are the variables that actually move it.
01
Corners, not length
A 40-foot straight run of crown in a hallway is faster than 40 feet around a room with a bay and two returns. Every inside corner is coped by hand if it is being done properly, every outside corner is a mitre that has to close, and each one is where a trim carpenter earns the difference between the two ends of the range.
02
Paint-grade or stain-grade
Paint-grade MDF or finger-jointed pine is stable, cheap and forgiving — caulk and filler close small gaps. Stain-grade hardwood shows every joint forever, so nothing is caulked, every cut has to be perfect and the material itself costs several times more. It is a different job, not an upgrade.
03
Profile size and complexity
A 3¼-inch base and a 7-inch base are the same install time and very different material cost. A tall stacked base or a built-up crown is two or three separate runs, each one installed and each one coped — that is where per-foot pricing doubles.
04
How straight the walls and ceilings are
This is the invisible one. Crown against a wavy ceiling has to be scribed, shimmed and caulked to look straight, and an out-of-plumb corner makes every mitre a custom angle. Older Maryland houses and rushed drywall both produce this, and it is why an on-site quote differs from a phone estimate.
05
Whether painting is in the number
Installed trim is not finished trim. Filling nail holes, caulking the top and bottom edge, sanding and painting is a real, separate job — $2 to $7 a foot. Two quotes are not comparable until you know which of them includes it.
On the job
What you are paying for.
Trade photography, stage by stage — the work these numbers buy. Photos of our own recent jobs come out at the walkthrough, on the actual house.
Straight answers
Finish Carpentry cost questions
Not covered here? Call and ask — you’ll get a real answer, not a “depends on the job”.
An average 12×14 room is roughly 52 linear feet, which at $7 to $20 installed comes to about $400 to $1,000 — plus $100 to $350 for painting if that is not included. A built-up or stacked profile in the same room can reach $2,000 or more.
For painted trim, MDF is genuinely the better product in most rooms: dead straight, no knots, no grain to telegraph through paint, and cheaper. Its real weakness is water — MDF baseboard in a bathroom or a basement that has ever taken water will swell at the bottom edge, and it does not recover. Use MDF for painted trim in dry rooms, and a moisture-tolerant material or PVC where water is a real possibility.
Yes, but keep the profile small — three to four inches. A large crown in an 8-foot room visually pulls the ceiling down. If you want the effect of height in a low room, tall baseboard and substantial door casing do more for it than crown does.
Four things account for most of it: whether painting is included, whether corners are coped or mitred, whether material cost is in the number or billed separately, and material grade. Get all four on paper and the quotes usually resolve into the same job at similar money — or into a clear difference in what is actually being built.
The usual sequence is prime the walls, install the trim, then caulk, fill and paint the trim, then put the wall's finish coats on and cut in to the trim. Pre-priming or pre-painting the trim before it goes up saves real time and produces a better edge, and is worth asking about — it means only the nail holes and joints need touching in place.
While the crew is there
The trades that usually come with it
Talk to the people doing the work
Get a straight number for the whole job.
Tell us what needs doing. We’ll walk it with you, sequence every trade it touches, put the price in writing, and leave you to decide.
Get a quote
Let’s price your project.
Two short steps. No obligation, no pressure — just a clear number and a straight answer about what the job involves.
Tick as many as you like. Most jobs are two or three of them at once, and I sort out the detail when I come and look. Nobody gets turned away for choosing the wrong box.
