Adding a beautiful new door to a room does more than change things up. It’s a way to create more privacy within a space, increase a home’s value, and even reimagine the décor with more ornate choices. Many homes include open halls and arcing ceilings that are difficult to work in. Fortunately, learning how to install a door in an open archway and then doing it, doesn’t have to be as difficult as it looks at first glance. With a little elbow grease and basic home repair skills, anyone can alter an archway space.

Essential Construction Expectations

To alter an archway, you can expect at least a little bit of construction to happen. For the job to look professional, you’ll need to get down to the studs. In other words, some drywall and insulation will likely need to be pulled out to properly get at the door.

It’s a good idea to layout plastic before you start and keep a vacuum and garbage bag handy. Not many tools are required besides a power drill to affix the door frame. After the task is done, the wall section will need to be refinished, which is also a relatively quick task.

Adding an Arch Door To an Open Arch

Unsurprisingly, adding an arched wooden door to an existing arch is much simpler than a square door. If the arch matches a standard door size, the arched do  or can be ordered to match. Although, you’ll still need to get at the wood studs to permanently place the frame. If the arch is too large, the best way to handle the situation is to add a standard square at an entryway of the arch. Simply box in the wall to the standard frame size you need.

The arched door will come snug in its own already-curved frame and can be easily fitted into the corresponding standard-sized square frame. The only aspect that’s different from a regular door is that you’ll need to add bracers across the corners where the curved edges don’t refer to the upper corners of the square frame.

Framing In a Large Archway

Despite the curved shape at the top of the door, all archways are essentially square doorways. The tricky part is the addition of an arcing support structure that may exceed the average height of a standard door. As noted, there’s not really a workaround to pulling out the wall fixtures down to the studs. Once that’s done, it’s easy to see what you have to work with.

How to install a door in an open archway is only as difficult as the archway is large. Even double door-sized walkways are easily closed up, but they require more beams and studs. The idea is to simply replace the basic square frame, which starts with removing the arc-shaped wood and laying a new straight crossbeam and then continuing to add support from there.