A Magnetic Screen for Arched and Round Top Windows

An arched opening is the one shape no stock screen covers. Screen frames are cut square, spline channels do not follow a curve, and the half screen that fits the window below the arch was never made for the arch itself. That is why a round top window is so often the only unscreened opening left in a house where everything else is covered.

How a Custom Made Arched Screen Works

The panel is cut to the curve you measured rather than to a size off a list. Magnetic strips run around the whole perimeter and follow the arch, and the matching adhesive strip goes on the frame or the jamb, so the screen sits against the actual shape of the opening instead of boxing it into a rectangle. Nothing is drilled, no tools are needed, and it comes away at the end of the season without marking the trim.

Full mesh or central splits

This is the option people ask about most. A full mesh panel is one continuous piece with no opening in it, which is the right choice for a window you look through rather than walk through: it is the tidiest and there is no seam across the glass.

A central split adds a magnetic closure down the middle, so the panel becomes two halves that part when you walk through and pull themselves shut behind you. Choose one split for an arched door or a round top patio door you use daily. Choose two or more on a wide arched opening, where splits also break a very large panel into sections one person can handle, fit and take down alone.

Measuring an Arched Opening

This is what decides whether the screen fits, and an arch needs one more measurement than a rectangle. Spend your time here rather than on the color.

The three measurements

First the overall width at the widest point. Second the total height, from the sill to the highest point of the curve. Third, and this is the one people forget, the height to the spring line, meaning the point up each side where the straight part ends and the curve begins. Without that third number, two openings with identical width and height can be completely different curves.

Half round, segmental and elliptical

A half round has a rise of exactly half the width and no straight section above the spring line. A segmental arch is a shallower curve where the rise is much less than half the width. An elliptical or gothic head is a different curve again. The three measurements above describe all of them, which is why we ask for numbers rather than for the name of the arch.

When the arch is not regular

Older and site built arches frequently are not. If the two sides do not match, or the curve is visibly flatter on one side, make a template: tape kraft paper or thin cardboard across the opening, run a pencil around the inside of the frame, and measure from that. It takes fifteen minutes and it is far more reliable than trying to describe an irregular curve in numbers.

Fitting Without Drilling

The adhesive follows the curve, so what it needs is a continuous, flat, clean surface all the way around the opening including through the arch. Check that before ordering: a deep jamb, a heavy molding profile or a drywall return through the head are all worth knowing about in advance. Clean the surface with rubbing alcohol rather than a household spray that leaves a residue, and avoid fitting in direct sun on a hot afternoon, because adhesive likes warm and does not like hot.

Custom Made Cannot Be Returned

A panel cut to your curve fits nobody else's opening, so unlike a stock size it cannot come back. That is not a policy quirk, it is what custom made means, and it is the reason to measure twice and write the numbers down rather than trusting memory between the ladder and the keyboard. If your opening is irregular, set into a deep jamb, or has hardware in the way, tell us with the order instead of rounding the numbers and hoping.

Where Arched Windows Turn Up in American Homes

Almost always somewhere that matters, and almost never somewhere the builder put a screen. The Palladian or half round window above a front window is a signature of traditional and colonial style building, particularly through the eighties and nineties. The arched transom over an entry door is the same story. In a great room the round top window is usually set high in a gable wall, which is exactly where the warm air goes and exactly the window you want open on a July evening.

Those windows were installed as architecture rather than as ventilation, so they were rarely screened. If yours opens, this is the opening that has been letting bugs in past every other screen in the house.

Renting and HOA rules

Because the panel is fixed with adhesive on the inside of the opening, nothing is drilled and nothing changes on the exterior of the building. In a rental that means the deposit is not at stake. In a community with an HOA, where the outside appearance of windows and doors is frequently governed and an exterior addition would need approval, it means there is nothing to approve. None of it is visible from the street.

A note on no-see-ums

Standard 18x16 fiberglass mesh, which is what we use, stops mosquitoes, houseflies and wasps. It does not stop no-see-ums, which is why no-see-um screening exists at 20x20 or finer. If you are on the Gulf Coast, in Florida or on the coastal Carolinas and those are your problem, that finer mesh is what the job needs and we do not offer it.