How to Make Colorful DIY Chevron Arrows

We’re almost through July, peeps! It’s funny living in Arizona – this is the time of year where we stay inside most of the time because it’s SO. HOT. outside! I’m not opposed to that, since I’ve been busy, ya know, growing a human!

I’m now on Week 22 and Baby R is the size of a coconut! Time is FLYING by!! As I mentioned in our nursery planning post, I decided on an adventure theme for our little boy’s room. I think this theme will be easy to play around with if we have a girl in the future.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been making huuugggeee strides in our nursery! One fun (and impactful!) project I want to share with you is a set of DIY chevron arrows, inspired by this pin. They add a fun pop of color and are pretty simple to make! Plus, the set of arrows cost us less than $20!

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Materials for DIY Chevron Arrows

• 87″ of 1″ x 6″ wood board (we got a 14 ft board at Home Depot for $6.92!)
• Hand Saw or Circular Saw
• Wood Filler
• Putty knife
• 220 grit sand paper
• Primer (optional)
• 3 Colors of paint (Paint colors are further down in the post. We used sample sizes of wall paint and used less than 1/4 of each container!)
• Paint brush
• 3 Sawtooth hangers
• 6, 2″ flat corner braces
• 3 Finishing nails
• Screw driver

Step 1: Cutting the Wood

Each chevron arrow is made of 2 jointed pieces of wood, so we’ll have 6 pieces of wood in total. I wanted each arrow to be 18″ across so they filled up the wall nicely. Planning the cuts for the wood was way more complicated than it needed to be (because math is hard), so we literally drew out the chevron arrow on the side of a box!  It helped us visualize what size and shape each piece of wood would be. All of the cuts were 45º.

Now that we knew the size of each board (13″ on the long sides, 9″ on the short sides), we drew a very rough picture of how we’d cut the pieces from a long board and how long the board needed to be. (13″ x 6 pieces of wood) + 9″ (the extra amount on the end for the last piece) = 87″ wood.

Step 2: Assembling the Chevrons

Now that the wood was cut, we put ’em together! We used two,  2″ flat corner braces per arrow and attached a sawtooth hanger to hang each one on the wall.

After that, we flipped the chevron over and spread some wood filler in the center crack and in the wood’s imperfections. After it dried, we smoothed it out with 220 grit sandpaper. You could still see the joint a little bit, but there was much less of a seam.

Step 3: Painting & Priming

Just to be safe, we primed each chevron arrow before painting it. We had tons of primer on hand and we didn’t want to have to do more than one coat of paint. Without primer, 2 coats of paint may have been necessary. I picked out the colors at Home Depot (below) and just got sample sizes. They were only about $5 each, way better quality than craft paint, tons more color options, and we had over 75% of each container left afterward! Win, win, win, win.

Paint Colors

White Paint: White Dove by Benjamin Moore, color matched in Behr Marquee
Mint Paint: Mirador by Behr
Navy Paint: Infinite Deep Sea by Behr

All paint colors were in an eggshell finish.

Step 4: Hanging the Chevron Arrows

Once these guys were dry, we put them in their final resting place (…that wasn’t meant to sound so morbid). Since we used the sawtooth hangers, we just had to put a small finishing nail in the wall for the hanger to sit on! We spaced the DIY chevron arrows about 4″ apart and did lots of measuring to ensure they were centered and spaced correctly. We hung them one at a time and spaced each one sequentially. Easy peasy!!

Pin it for later…

Not just for the nursery…

While these go great in a nursery, they’d be great pieces of decor for many other places, too! Such as…

• A gradient of your colors for a living room or bedroom.
• A wall collage incorporating a smaller version of these DIY chevron arrows. Pair them with a few signs, pictures frames, or other knick knacks for the wall.
• In an office, restaurant, or other business pointing to the bathroom or another important place.
• Don’t limit yourself! 🙂

So, whaddya think?? I think…… YOU GOT THIS! Give it a shot and if you have any questions, just drop a comment below! Have fun!!