How do you make a balloon arch: step-by-step tutorial

What do you need for a balloon arch?

The colours and quantities vary by situation. Below you can find which colours and how many balloons we have used.

Without balloons, there is of course no arch! For this tutorial, we have:

• used 144 balloons of 12 inches. The colours? Fashion Lilac and Fashion Violet.
• Also a sizer or inflator with size setting. So you can inflate them to exactly 9 inches.

For the frame, you will use the following materials:

• Two lamp bases. For this, there is the B405 or B410
• A flexible PVC tube of 16 mm, the type that plumbers use. For a balloon arch of 2 metres high, you need a tube of 2.5 metres. Or you buy a larger size and cut it down afterwards. The 16 mm tube fits exactly over the TÅGARP pole.
• Two weights of approximately 5 kg with a hole in the middle, so discs. You slide these over the poles for stability.
• Two balloons of 260, transparent is best or in one of your arch colours, to attach the tube to the poles. View all modelling balloons here.

Step 1: build the frame

Screwing five segments of the lamp post together on each side and slide a weight over it. Bend the tube and slide both ends over the poles. How far you slide the tube down determines the height of your arch: slide until you can comfortably walk underneath.vijf segmenten van de lamppaal in elkaar en schuif er een gewicht over. Buig de buis en schuif beide uiteinden over de palen. Hoe ver je de buis naar beneden schuift, bepaalt de hoogte van je boog: schuif tot je er comfortabel onderdoor kan wandelen.

Now the most important part of the frame: the tube is loose on the pole, and as soon as you twist balloons onto it, it will slide up and down. So you need to secure it. Audrey does this not with tape but with a 260.

1. Blow a small puff of air into the 260 and tie it off. Almost no air then.
2. Twist the balloon in a downward spiral around the tube and the pole together. As you wrap, push all the air out of the balloon so it pulls tight.
3. Go over the transition from pole to tube a few times.
4. And now double knot. Take the end and tie it around itself. Do not cut off the excess, otherwise the knot may slip loose.

Repeat on the other side. The result: you can lift the tube and the pole comes along.

Step 2: prepare balloons in duplets

Inflate each balloon from 12 inches to 9 inches. Eight inches is also fine, but not smaller and not larger: for a spiral you want a dense, even surface, and that only works if each balloon is exactly the same size. Make the balloon nice and round before you tie it, so that it is nicely spherical instead of pear-shaped.

Then make duplets of two balloons in the same colour. Place the nozzles tightly against each other and twist one nozzle around the other twice and tie securely. A loose duplet will later become a loose arch, so better too tight than too loose.

For an arch of this size, you need about 36 quads, and a quad is simply two duplets: one lilac and one violet. Of course, you may need slightly more or slightly fewer balloons depending on your frame.

Step 3: build the arch

From here, you build the pattern. Work from both sides towards the middle at the same time: first a quad at the bottom left, then a quad at the bottom right, and so on upwards. This way, you can constantly see if both sides are even and you end up at the top in the middle with an even pattern.

So that means, per quad:

1. Take a lilac duplet and a violet duplet.
2. Twist the duplets around each other and around the pole, so that the four balloons alternate in colour: lilac, violet, lilac, violet.
3. Push the quad down against the previous one, but not too hard. Keep your balloons round instead of flattened.
4. Turn the quad a little bit relative to the previous one, so that each colour shifts a little each time. That shift is your spiral.

Stop after every three or four quads and take a step back. Does the line of each colour flow upwards smoothly? Continue. Is there a kink in it? Straighten it out.

The main rule: let your spiral turn inwards. This is the detail that most people miss and that makes an arch "complete". Your arch exists because someone will stand in it or walk through it. So let your spirals turn towards the middle of the arch on both sides. This way, everything points to the person in the middle and the arch feels inviting. Spirals that turn outwards push the eye away from exactly what you want to show.

Practical: when you place the first quad, you immediately choose the direction of rotation (left turns to right, right turns to left), and you maintain that throughout the entire arch.

Variations and add-ons

This arch is your base. From there, everything is still possible!

• More colours. Combine your quads with your favourite colours. See them all here.
• Themes. A green spiral with dinosaurs on it for a children's party, or a dark spiral with fireworks accents for New Year's Eve. The combinations are endless.
• Flowers and accents. Audrey finishes the arch with balloon flowers. She prepares a few attachment points in advance, takes a neck of a balloon from the arch and ties it to the connection point at the back of the flower.

Save time on location

If you don't have much time to build the arch at the client's location, you can best build columns at home up to just below the point where the tube comes. On location, you place the poles, slide the tube over, wrap the 260's, and only need to twist the quads onto the tube. This way, an arch of 144 balloons is set up in a fraction of the time, and it looks exactly the same.

Another practical note: this is an indoor arch. Outside, the weights are not sufficient. If you still want to set it up outside, anchor the poles to something sturdy, a window, a fence, a structure that does not move, otherwise it will blow away.

Frequently asked questions