This Entryway Features an Elegant, Updated Take on the Popular Painted Arch, the Internet’s Favorite Paint Project

If you’re someone who likes to inject inspiration from your travels into your home, you’ll want to take note of the storied East Village apartment of Meher Goel. “I’ve lived across six countries,” Goel says, “which has allowed me to borrow inspiration from all the cultures I’ve been lucky enough to carry with me.” Her New York home has a little nod to each of her previous homes (and plenty of smart DIYs!), but my favorite element might be the ornate painted arches in the entryway.

“Over the pandemic, as part of my ever-evolving healing process,” Goel says, “I had gone back to making things with my hands and taken a special interest in sustainable interior design and refurbishing furniture. My entryway was a bonding activity between two friends and lot of late night laughter.” Sounds like an ideal mid-pandemic activity, the results are just stunning.

Since the original entry was a standard, white-walled one, and Goel describes her style as “modern-eclectic, transitional, and Parisian, with a splash of maximalist,” clearly, a design disconnect existed in this small space. She wanted a bit of Morocco, Mexico, and Rajasthan, India, in her home, so she took inspiration from the vibrancy of the Museo Frida Kahlo and the architecture of the fresco-adorned mansions of India’s Shekhawati region, called Havelis. That’s how she came up with the bold blue faux archway paint project you see here in the after shot. The two-toned mural spans the entire door wall!

First, Goel sketched the dual arches design out onto scrap paper to create a stencil for herself. Then she traced it onto the walls and over a previously plain door. Expert placement of the arches allowed her to frame the doorway and part of the blank wall space to its right, where she wanted to create a vignette for a shoe rack meets entry table.

With the help of her two above-mentioned friends, she painted around the arch shapes in a vibrant cobalt blue and finished off the space with an upcycled IKEA STÄLL shoe rack (that she also zhuzed up with hardware and a new tabletop), thrifted candle holders, and textile prints from Italy. The final result is an elegant and updated take on the ever-popular painted arch, and it will surely transport any visitor in Goel’s home to a place far from the East Village of New York.