The Gorgeous Accent Wall Arch You Can DIY With Pool Noodles

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Having your home decorated to your exacting specifications is much more than an aesthetic bonus. Interior design elements like wall color and decor can have a huge impact on how one mentally perceives their current life situation and stressors, so it's important to make it pleasant. This might be harder if you're among the third of Americans who rent rather than own their house, particularly those aged 25 to 34, but there are unique DIY solutions to get high-quality design elements without breaking the bank or your lease. One unexpected idea might be utilizing pool noodles to create accent wall archways you'd expect to see in something like classically Mediterranean architecture.

There are numerous fan-favorite DIY pool noodle home projects out there because of how easy it is to manipulate and customize the plastic toys. Multiple pool noodles are laid out in one contiguous, curving line for a DIY accent wall hack posted by @gontse_pk on Facebook, adding pops of depth and texture that are seamlessly blended into your home. It's a cheap hack for those looking to maximize their limited budgets, with the original video poster only utilizing paint and primer, as well as wallpaper, to complete their vision for a modern design statement that has different elements displayed within and outside the pool noodle arch. Given you can pick up a pack of six pool noodles online for less than $30, this is an accessible way to start updating your home as soon as possible.

Pool noodles are made with a buoyant plastic material called polyethylene, but glues you might otherwise use to attach them to things — such as rubber cement — could lead to expensive drywall repairs. Luckily, these noodles are light enough that a number of other solutions are available. A line of mounting putty could keep your DIY accent in place, for example, as this adhesive is good for hard plastics. It should also be easy enough to use Command strips with detachable Velcro, which would allow you to move them around too. Otherwise, you can buy pool noodles with pre-cut slits that are often used to insulate water pipes so you have a flatter, thinner material which can be more easily nailed into the wall.

Once the pool noodles are in place, the sky's the limit as far as how you decorate. While @gontse_pk used the same paint color that covered their pool noodles to fill the interior space of its division, and then coated the outer space with wallpaper, there's nothing to say you couldn't do the reverse. You could also set it up to highlight other features of the home, such as centering around the entryway door or a window. You don't even have to stick with an arch; pool noodles can help keep your home organized by dividing wall space in clean horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines, all depending on what final look you're trying to achieve.