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Molding in architecture, furniture, and decorative objects, a surface or group of surfaces of projecting or receding contours. A plastic molding may serve as a defining element, terminating a unit or an entire composition or establishing a boundary or transition between portions of a design.

One of the primary considerations in the product design of custom molds is the type of shadow it will cast. The shape of a molding is termed its profile or section. Moldings formed an important part of most past styles; however, their place was taken by flat ceramic enrichments in color.

Moldings were an essential feature of Greek orders and buildings. The Greek profiles form the basic molding vocabulary for classic types such as the fillet and the fascia, flat vertical surfaces; the ovule, of an egg like convex outline; the bead and the torus, both convex, three fourths of a circle and one half, respectively; the cavetto, a quarter circle, and the Scotia, of elliptical curvature, both concave; and the cyma recta and the cyma reversal, both of compound curvature, being half concave and half convex. The ovule was carved with the alternating egg and dart; the acanthus leaf and the anthemion were used for the cyma recta, or ogee, and the water leaf for the cyma reversal.

In the late Gothic of France and Germany there were ingenious combinations of differing elements to produce broken, merging, and interpenetrating moldings? In developed Gothic a rich assortment of naturalistic forms appeared e. g., flowers and intertwining vines. The Renaissance return to purely Roman forms was followed in the baroque by heavier, projecting moldings, which cast dramatic shadows. Later a wide variety of styles was employed, but since the 19th cent., decorative molding has been little used in modern architecture.