How to Paint an Arch on a Wall

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to paint an arch on a wall – perfect for a feature behind a bed or anywhere you want to make a statement in a room.

I recently painted an arch on the wall behind my daughter’s queen-size bed, and I absolutely love how it turned out.

The best part about this feature wall is that it’s budget friendly because it only requires paint and a few other supplies you probably already have on hand.

This feature wall is part of a larger project – my daughter’s bedroom makeover. I put together a mood board for her updated bedroom, and this is wall is just the beginning!

HOW TO PAINT AN ARCH ON A WALL

STEP 1: GATHER SUPPLIES

For this project, you’ll need:

paint (I used Sherwin Williams accessible beige in eggshell) for the arch
pencil
string
level
nail
hammer
paint brush
measuring tape
painter’s tape, or masking tape

STEP 2: TAKE MEASUREMENTS

You’ll want to first determine how wide of an arch you want to paint. I wanted my arch to have a 3” overhang on either side of the headboard.

I measured the headboard and then added 6” total, to come up the complete width of the arch.

Once you figure out the width of the arch, you’ll want to determine where on the wall you want to put the arch.

I wanted my arch to be almost centered on the wall. Mine isn’t quite centered on the wall because I wanted to allow for some extra space on the left side of the bed for specific furniture.

It’s still close enough to center though, that it looks centered in the room to the naked eye.

STEP 3: DRAW THE ARCH

Now that you have your measurements, you’ll want to draw the arch on your wall.

To do this, first start with drawing the vertical lines of the arch.

I figured out where I wanted each vertical line on the wall and then used a level to draw a straight line for each side.

Here’s how one of my vertical lines looked:

Then I needed to draw the arch.

To draw the arch, I made a makeshift compass with a nail, string and pencil.

I found the halfway point of the total arch width. Then, I measured up 53” from the floor. I marked this location to hammer in the nail.

Then I tied string around the nail.

I then hammered the nail into the location that I marked.

Here’s a close up of what it looked it:

If you look hard enough in the below picture, you can see it’s a bit above the headboard.

To determine how long the string would be, I pulled the string to the outer edge of the arch. Then, I knotted the string around a pencil right at that point.

Then, I took the pencil and drew a half circle to connect the two arch sides.

It took a few times because the pencil can slant. You have to be super careful to put pressure on the pencil when you’re drawing the arch, so you don’t slant the pencil and get different angles.

STEP 4: PAINT THE ARCH

Once you have your arch drawn with a pencil, it’s time to start painting!

I painted the middle of the arch first, without going over the lines I drew. I wanted to save the detail work around the lines until the end.

I would definitely recommend using painter’s tape or masking tape to get a nice crisp line when painting the sides of the arch.

I, unfortunately, didn’t have any tape so I had to freehand the lines.

I followed the line very carefully to get it as crisp as possible.

You’ll have to paint the top of the arch freehanded, based on the line you drew. Just go slow! You can also try using a really small paint brush to get it nice and crisp.

It also helps to have the other paint color, that’s on the outside of your arch, on hand so you can do touchups from that side as well.

Luckily, I just painted the wall in Behr ultra pure white paint so I was able to do touchups pretty easily. I made sure to let the beige paint dry before doing the touch ups with the white paint.

Here’s how my arch looked during the drying phase. I immediately loved it!

This project is super budget-friendly, but it can take some time when doing the measurements and painting the arch. It can be done in a couple hours though, which I think is a pretty quick project.

It also creates a big impact in a room!