Frequently Asked Questions

Of course! Samples are available for most cornice, railing and skirting options and can be ordered from the same pages as the full lengths. Just choose the ‘Sample’ option from the dropdown menu. Our samples cost £1.99 per piece for most profiles and £3.49 for our largest ones. This is purely to cover the cost of postage and allows us to use extra secure packaging to ensure your samples reach you in perfect condition!

If you place your order before 10:30am then it will usually leave our warehouse that afternoon. Delivery is then often next day but can take 2-3 days depending on the level of demand on our couriers. You can find more information on deliveries, including costs, on our Delivery page.

Yes! We firmly believe our range of mouldings are among the easiest to fit products of their type available on the market. They’re very lightweight and durable, unlike plaster and other more traditional materials. Our products install using glue and don’t need to be pinned, making them faster to fit and with much less hassle.

Yes! Whilst any competent DIYer should be able to install our products fairly easily, we understand that sometimes hiring a professional is the better option. You should find it’ll take your tradesman as little as a third of the time to fit our products as it does to fit plaster mouldings, so the labour bill will be far lower!

Some of them can. Anything in our Exterior range can be fitted outdoors, as well as our columns. Our Premier range of mouldings can also be used outside. If you have any questions about this then please do give us a call and we will be happy to advise on specific products and fitting before your order.

Yes! In fact the vast majority of our range is resistant to both humidity and heat (up to 70°C or 158°F).

Fire Standard E. This means that the product can burn, will continue burning and will not automatically stop burning.

We aim to price our range as keenly as possible, so our ability to offer discounts is limited on most orders. That said, we do offer further discounts for trade customers, and if you are interested in placing a large order then please contact us and we’ll see what we can do! We also run special offers from time to time, so be sure to sign up to our mailing list to be the first to know about them!

Incredibly! We’ve even had customers call us who have moved into a house and lived with the beams for a few years, only realising they weren’t real wood when they came to doing some renovation work. We use rubber moulds (rather than metals like a lot of other mouldings), as the rubber can reach into every nook and cranny to capture every detail of the original timbers. Every piece is then stained and finished by hand to give an authentic look.

Of course! In fact, with our Foake range, we will always send you a sample piece for your approval before commissioning your order. Once you’ve seen the sample and approved it, we’ll have our master craftsmen produce your order by hand.

Compared to genuine, salvaged antique oak, our beams are cheaper. Compared to modern oak it can vary, dependant upon the quality and market conditions for the oak. Installation costs should be considerably cheaper than wood.

No. Foake products are purely decorative. However, we have a number of options available to fit aroud RSJs and other structural supports. Feel free to give us a call for more information!

Being lightweight and easy to cut using simple woodworking tools they are relatively easy to install. Good DIY’ers and tradesmen should have little or no problem. Click here to view our installation page. They are certainly more easy to install than wood.

Yes! The polymer/resin hybrid our Foake range is made from is resistant to both heat and humidity. This means you can use it in bathrooms, kitchens and other areas where there’s excess moisture. We also have Foake products specifically for outdoor and exterior use.

We can deliver to anywhere in the UK and you’ll be able to see an accurate cost at checkout. Delivery to other locations is possible but we will need to provide you a bespoke quote. Our Foake beams tend to be very large, so they cost a lot to transport! We will always work with you to find the best, most cost effective way to get your order to you so please do get in touch.

No! We’re happy to accommodate any size order.

No, but they can be used with additional support if there is any load bearing requirement. This means that they can be used in one of two ways:

1. When no structural support is required, purely as a decorative feature.

2. In conjunction with a structural support. In this instance the column, or more usually two half columns, would wrap around the structure that will hold any weight, like a steel or a wooden post. For each column we show the minimum internal diameter. Deduct 5mm from this measurement to allow for tolerance and you have the maximum diameter of any support structure that can be accommodated. Keep in mind that a square or rectangular support will be widest across it’s diagonal measurement, so it is this that needs to be less than the inner diameter of the column.

Our columns are moulded in metal moulds from high density polyurethane. They are reinforced to be durable against the usual knocks and bumps that could be expected in the position they are used. The material itself looks just like plaster, both in terms of the texture and the quality of detailing in the mould.

Whilst our columns have the beauty of plaster, they are considerably easier to install and maintain than plaster. They are lightweight, easy to install using just adhesives, preprimed to need just one coat of paint (plaster can require several as it soaks paint up) and not brittle and therefore not prone to damage and chipping like plaster can be. Other common materials include grp and grg, but these tend to have a much rougher, to most eyes more ugly, finish to them. Like plaster they can also be heavier and more prone to chipping.

Most columns and pilaster are made up from three sections; a capital at the top, the column itself and the plinth (or base) at the bottom.

Columns are generally easy to reduce in size by cutting away from the base component and / or the shaft. You will notice on some of the photographs we show on the site that customers often mount our columns onto a base, which builds the height up to a point where our columns fit.

Click here for installation instructions.

Some columns are available in a matter of days. Others take a couple of weeks. You’ll find details of which are which on their range pages.