When renovating a new apartment, its final appearance takes a special place, so everything needs to be calculated to the smallest detail. To give an attractive appearance to the apartment, the walls in it should be beautifully finished. Many different materials are used for this, however, the most popular of them is drywall. It can be used to make both smooth and boring walls and ceilings, as well as various shapes on the ceiling and walls. Inside the apartment, a plasterboard arch is popular, which is often installed above the doorway. A plasterboard arch will perfectly decorate a boring acute-angled apartment in a cozy and cheerful, round box, where you can have a great rest from everything and everyone. After finishing the walls with plasterboard, you will have to brighten it up with something to give brightness and aesthetic appearance to the material. So, how to decorate a drywall arch in order to achieve just such an effect, we will tell you below.
What is this article about
Finishing options
As you know, there are two types of arches: round and square. The former are well suited for apartments, and the latter for summer cottages or country houses. But it may be the other way around, it just all depends on the style of the interior. For some strict designs, a square arch is perfect, and for relaxed and cheerful styles, a round arch is the best option.
Decorating the arch with your own hands will take a lot of time and effort, but in the end you will get a house where you want to live forever. It is not so difficult to do this with drywall, because, as you know, drywall is a versatile material that can be finished in any way used for wall decoration. Moreover, the statistics of the popularity of finishing materials for drywall is the same as for the walls themselves, but we will only touch on the most popular of them. According to our observations, the consumer is inclined to choose: wallpaper, paint, decorative stone and decorative plaster, as a finishing material for a plasterboard arch.
Wallpaper
About how to paste over the wallpaper below. This option for finishing the arch is the most affordable for the consumer. Its other advantage is its wide selection of prints and patterns, making wallpaper perhaps the most creative variation on your arch. In this case, you can choose one wallpaper for the arch and others for the rest of the room in order to highlight it, but here the main thing is not to overdo it with highlighting the structure, that is, you cannot choose minimalist wallpaper for the room and, for example, wallpaper with the image of the sea. This means that one should smoothly flow into the other, that is, the wallpapers can be different, but with the same design style.
Advice when installing wallpaper on the arch. When decorating the outer part of the arch with wallpaper, bend the wallpaper inward a little and, stepping back from the corner, literally a millimeter, cut off an unnecessary piece. Having done this on both outer sides, you should glue the wallpaper on the inside of the arch. If you do everything according to this advice, the joints on the wallpaper will look a little more natural, since there will not be this random white strip between the sheets of wallpaper.
It is very important to level the surface on which the wallpaper will be glued in order to achieve the aesthetic appearance of the wallpaper pattern. This is done with an ordinary putty. To save mortar, you can putty only the joints of gypsum plasterboards, since the rest of this material is often perfectly even.
Let's talk about the disadvantages. Yes, we have washable wallpapers, thick wallpapers with a supposedly long lifespan, but this does not change the fact that the life of any wallpaper, no matter how much praised by the manufacturer or seller, is still short. It often lasts about 2-4 years with careful use and proper care.
Dye
So, the second most popular option is painting the arch. Here you can show your individuality and paint your unique ornament, drawing or inscription with paints, the main thing is to have a good imagination and paint brushes, and do not forget that the artist's skills are not the last thing in this matter, and if you do not own this gift, it is better to call a specialist.
But if, to the greatest regret, you do not have any of the above, then you can simply buy paint and tools, and then paint every room in monotonous and boring paint. To highlight the arch, and this is important, otherwise why did you do it at all, you can make a beautiful painting on the inner and outer parts of the arch using a stencil and cans of paint. By choosing a suitable color background for this mural, you can easily dazzle any guest in your home.
Naturally, painting has its drawbacks. Firstly, this is the price, because a can of good paint can cost good money and there will not be enough money to cover the whole house with such paint or it will cost a tidy sum. Secondly, at this price, these paints can be easily spoiled by children or by you if you accidentally get on it with liquids, colored pencils, pens, paints, etc.
Decorative plaster
This material can be used when decorating a plasterboard arch, while it is important to take into account the design of the entire room so that the arch stands out, but not too much, otherwise it will feel like the arch was taken from another apartment and simply transferred to yours. When using decorative plaster, many householders sculpt columns from it. Yes, it is beautiful, but not always, because these columns in the classical style will not fit into the Art Nouveau style in any way, so you need to correctly weigh the pros and cons before deciding on the columns. After all, their list of applications does not end with them, for example, a small or large ornament that does not go out of fashion can serve as an excellent replacement for the same columns, because the classics cannot become outdated.
One of the disadvantages of this solution is fragility and a tendency to crack. But this can happen when buying low-quality material or improper installation. Otherwise, this material is very good: it is durable, it is not too expensive, it is suitable for almost all interior styles. Although it is aimed at use in the yard or for outdoor decoration of the house.
Decorative rock
For a beautiful decor of the arch, you can also use a decorative stone, which is perfectly attached to any surface using construction glue. It is not recommended to use heavy natural stone as a working material, since a drywall construction cannot boast of such a high carrying capacity to retain all the power and beauty of a natural decorative stone. So use substitutes that mimic it well. They can be made from a variety of materials.
One of the disadvantages of this finishing material is its complexity of installation, because its layout takes a lot of time and effort, like all the others, it requires a lot of attention and accurate calculation. Another disadvantage is the price. Decorative stone is truly almost the most expensive of the finishing materials. But the greatest advantage of such a stone is its appearance, because it is not in vain that it costs so much money.
Mosaic
Another good option for decorating an arch in an apartment. Practical and unpretentious, also suitable for wet rooms.
What should not be used to cover a drywall arch
There are materials that are not recommended for finishing the arch. One of them is decorative plastic panels. They have many disadvantages in relation to the decoration of the arches. For example, it is difficult to install it due to the fact that there are a lot of corners in the arch, so you will have to put a huge number of corners of the baseboards and do not forget about the frame for the plastic panels. And besides, plastic always creates a feeling of cheapness, by the way, this is the way it is, because plastic panels are very cheap. But this is not a reason to use them for.
Another material that should not be used for decoration is wood paneling. The main reason for the failure is the low flexibility of the wood, which makes it impossible to finish the interior of the plasterboard arch.
Let's talk a little about square arches. From the name it is clear that this type of arch does not have roundness, instead of them there are strips installed at an angle of 45˚. So for this type of arches, you can use both wood and plastic. In addition, all previously used finishing elements (wallpaper, paint, decorative plaster and decorative stone) can be used to decorate a square arch. The only thing we do not recommend is finishing the arch with decorative plastic panels.
Arch corners
This question is quite natural, since most people are not used to relying on the master when installing finishing materials and they always have to think: "What to do with the corners of the arch?" But this is not a problem, because you can simply tint the corners in the same color as its surroundings. For example, a gray or black color is suitable for a decorative stone. For wallpapers, we already gave you advice above in the section about them. When painting the arch, the corners do not need additional processing. And when decorating with plaster, you don't need to think about corners at all.
Also, there is an option to stick plastic corners on the corners of the arch, after which they can be painted or left white. The corners will protect the arch from damage if you accidentally hit it with something, and such precedents will certainly be.
Successful renovation!