This project has been one of my most favorites that we tackled. It has so much drama from stage to stage. I knew what my vision was, and I am the type that will do whatever I can to make it happen once it’s stuck in my head. The problem is I don’t always think about step B-Y, I only focus on A and Z. Luckily we pulled it off and the kids’ room is easily my favorite in the whole house! We did the project from start to finish in a just a few hours and under $100 (if you have some of the tools or paints already you can get it done even cheaper). It pulled together the vision I had for the kids room 100%. It’s hard finding a vibe that meets three kids and both genders. Each of the older kids has been asking for more personalized items in their room (I guess my boho desert vibe wasn’t exciting to my tiny kids, lol). I love, love, love that final reveal. They each have their own flair in their spaces, and they were all so excited about their rainbow!
About the process of painting the rainbow, this whole thing started with a bit of overconfidence on the way to Home Depot to pick paint. Then I had the hardest time finding the right colors, and second, third, and fourth guessed myself. While we waited in line for our paint, I realized that every tutorial I found was for a solid color arch or a rainbow with spaces in between each arch. That was not what I wanted, but I also didn’t think I was DIY savvy enough to figured it out by myself, but I figured we’d wing it. Then, I started googling paint brushes and tape (can you say newbie, lol) and found that different people have very different, and very passionate, opinions. We got home, and measured out the straight lines for the arch like a piece of cake. Then we needed to make the arch drawings on the wall and we realized that the technique we went with didn’t go over smoothly (no pun intended) with out textured walls. We both tried a few times and failed, then stared at the wall for about 15 minutes until Christian told me to leave so he could handle it. AND HE DID! With some determination and a super steady hand he got it done. Then I came in and handled the paint and voila, it was complete! Scroll to the end to see the completed room!
How to Paint a Rainbow Arch
You will need:
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paint for each color in your rainbow (we only needed one sample paint container for each arch)
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a good angled paintbrush
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pencil
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string
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thumbtack or nail
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blue painters tape
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measuring tape
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Decide how many arches you want in your rainbow and pick a color for each one
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Measure your wall space you want to fill. Take the number of arches you’re doing add 1 and then multiply that by 2. Now, divide the wall space by that number. The reason you’re adding an “invisible” arch it to get a space in the middle of the arch that is equal to two of the arches. Ex. We did 5 color arches so we had to measure out 12 equal stripes for the bottom of the rainbow.
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Once you draw our straight lines for the bottoms of the arches of each rainbow color its time for the trickier part. The process in itself is pretty simple but it took some finesse for us to perfect it. Place a nail or thumbtack directly in the center of the rainbow, the for each arch you make a string long enough to reach the pencil to the top of where the arch begins. (Here’s a video that explains it a bit better start at 45 seconds in to see the technique we used)
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We made the creative decision to not use tape for each line. The first reason is we didn’t have time or patience to let each one dry before moving on. The second reason is we knew that the curved part of the arches would be imperfect no matter what, so we thought it would feel more cohesive to have it all be slightly imperfect. To be honest I can’t even notice any big imperfections. We taped the outside of the straight part of the first arch and then began to fill in each color. The key was a nice angled paint brush.
Click HERE to see a time lapse of us completing the arch & some more detailed explanation of how we did it!
Now that you know how to make one for yourself, here is a photo dump of the completed room!
