Decorating arches in the apartment with their own hands

In the era of newfangled building materials and bold design solutions, it's hard to surprise someone with standard rectangular doors. Therefore, very often, when choosing a design for their apartment, many owners decide to decorate the interior openings in the form of arches. If you show a little imagination, such designs can not only unite the space of several rooms, but also become the most attractive element of the decor throughout the room. Decorating arches can be performed in a variety of options, for every taste and purse. With the help of what materials you can decorate a doorway of unusual shape and how to do this work with your own hands, we will consider this article.

Selection of finishing materials

Since the arches have gained popularity for a long time, manufacturers of modern finishing materials managed to establish production of products focused specifically on this element of the interior. Today in the specialized markets you can find ready-made wood and MDF products, which can only be inserted in the doorway.

If you do not want to limit yourself to standard solutions, or the passage already has a rounded shape and you just need to decorate it, you can use the following materials:

• Wallpaper (any varieties);
• Decorative plaster;
• Cork;
• molding;
• polyurethane;
• Mosaic;
• Decorative and natural stone.

Finishing of arches can be carried out by any of the listed options, the main thing is that it fits well with the design of both rooms. In order to assess the complexity of the work, we will dwell on each material separately.

Paper and cork wallpaper

Arch Finishing Wallpaper is considered the easiest in performance and budget option. There is no need to worry about the combination of materials, since more often walls and an opening are pasted with the same canvases.

It would seem that such a finish would be mediocre and unattractive, but if you show ingenuity, you can give the arch a very impressive appearance.

The use of wall-paper "under a brick" will allow to execute inexpensive imitation of a bricklaying.

Adding contrasts to the interior will help bright wallpaper with large drawings. They are made only arch arch, and at the junctions of different canvases have special plastic corners, protecting the corners from erasures.

Recently, the decoration of arches is often done with cork wallpaper. Their use helps to decorate and highlight the zone of the interior passage on the general background. The material can be used even in places of high humidity, but only in this case it is necessary to choose options that have a wax coating.

Technology of pasting the arch with wallpaper

Before you start to glue the wallpaper, the surface of the arch and adjacent walls should be well leveled with a putty.

Then they are preparing the glue. Experienced experts advise mixing a thick adhesive solution. This allows you to achieve excellent grip in places of steep bend and allows you to move the canvas for better docking.

The first strip is glued to the wall, located near the arch. The next one is located in such a way that the archway is half closed. The protruding part of the glued web is cut off, leaving an allowance of 25 mm. Through the entire length of the resulting stock, small incisions are made (at a distance of 20 mm from each other), which are folded onto the inner side and glued using a roller. Thus, the whole opening is glued on both sides.

Then move to the arch arch. From the wallpaper cut out a strip, the width of which is equal to the depth of the opening itself. Given the location of the elements of the pattern, it is glued to the inside surface of the arch and side walls. To prevent the formation of air bubbles, the wallpaper is smoothed with a clean roller.

The installation of cork wallpaper is no different from working with paper canvases, so we will not dwell on it separately.

Decorative plaster

Decorating the arch with your own hands can be done with an even simpler method - applying decorative plaster.

Before using it, you must remove any flaws on the wall surface. With the help of putty and spatula smooth out all irregularities, mask the seams and hide the hats of fasteners. To ensure a reliable adhesion of the material to the base, the arch is treated with a primer and allowed to dry for a day.

Next, a layer of decorative plaster is applied, which with the help of a special spatula is given the necessary reliefs.

When it is completely dry, it can be painted with special paints or simply treated with finishing solutions.

Molding

Often, the decoration of arches in the apartment is carried out by combining various materials, and as a highlight of this interior are moldings.

This term is commonly used to mean a variety of decorative elements in the form of curly, narrow and long strips. They can be made of plastic, polystyrene, wood, MDF, metal and other materials.

Moldings perfectly match all types of wallpaper and decorative plaster. Such slats are installed from both ends of the arch and fastened with liquid nails. For the best combination with the interior it is recommended to use such elements not only for finishing the opening, but also for decorating the surrounding surfaces.

Products from polyurethane

Recently, very often the decoration of arches is performed with the use of polyurethane. It is a dense and sufficiently flexible material, from which decorative elements of white color are made in the form of stucco molding.

This decoration is attractive in that its cost is much lower than, say, decorating with a stone or tiles. The installation of polyurethane is very simple - with a specially designed adhesive. The lining of the opening can be carried out in two versions. In the first arch is decorated both from the inside and from the outside. In this case, the vertical columns can be designed in the form of rounded or square columns, expanding upward.

If the massive structures do not fit into the surrounding interior, you can make only the edging of the corners from the more graceful elements.

Natural and artificial stone

Decorating the arch with a decorative stone is the most laborious process, but the result is always impressive. Most effectively, this facing looks when not only the passage is trimmed, but also a part of the walls adjacent to it. Here both symmetry and asymmetry are relevant. If the openings are located close to each other, you can decorate the interior with a smoothly changing lining from one arch to the other. Regardless of which option is chosen, natural materials always look rich and impressive.

In favor of the stone, says that it does not require a perfectly smooth surface, so there is no need for its thorough preparation.

However, there are complications associated with the use of this material.

First of all, it's his weight. Natural stones are not recommended for facing structures made of plasterboard, as this can lead to deformation and even destruction of the opening. It is better to use gypsum or acrylic imitation, which looks no less exquisite.

Also, the decoration of the arch with a stone is greatly complicated in rounded places. Inexperienced masters have to tinker with it to perform the work beautifully and efficiently.

Installation of decorative stone

Facing is performed in several stages:

1. The surface shpaklyuetsya to remove large irregularities.

2. Preparing the adhesive. Most often a mixture of lime, cement, sand and glue is used. If light grades or gypsum imitations were chosen for decoration, it is possible to fasten with conventional liquid nails.

3. The first stone is laid at the very bottom, at the junction of the wall and the archway. He is exposed on the level and pressed tight against the wall. To ensure that the end of the work does not have to close the corners, the material is lapped. To do this, tiles of the first row from the floor are fastened to the opening, but the tiles of the second row are moved inward by a distance equal to its own thickness. Thus, by alternating the rows, the entire lining is performed.

4. During decoration of the arc-shaped part of the opening, the material is applied to the arch, marking the cut line and removing all unnecessary. Here you can use special cutters or angle grinder.

5. All angular and sharp edges are gently ground with a file.

6. The resulting seams are filled with a special grout.

Mosaic

Decorative decoration of the arch in places of high humidity (such as a bath, bath, kitchen) is most often performed using mosaic.

In this version, it is possible to use products from glass, ceramics, metal, concrete or tile. The material is laid out on a prepared and smoothed surface, where it is attached to a specialized composition. The glue is applied with a notched trowel simultaneously on the wall and the tile, after which the product is firmly pressed against the surface. The seams are neatly rubbed with special colored compounds.

Using a patterned tile slightly complicates the masonry, since the material must be placed in accordance with the pattern, but the final result is worth the effort.

Conclusion

The modern construction market is so diverse that it is simply impossible to list all the options for revetting doorways. Designers for creating interiors are increasingly using bamboo, textile, mirror, forged and other elements. We tried to consider the most popular materials with which you can perform the finish of the arch. The photos presented in this article will help you to get an idea of this or that way of decorating, and maybe, they will push to create your own project. We hope that the above recommendations will be of great help to all novice masters.