Step-by-step | How to DIY Remove Smudges from your Wallpaper | Decorating Centre Online

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Although sometimes cleaning your wallpaper fully and thoroughly is a necessary step in making your wallpaper look fresh and new again, it is also sometimes unnecessary.

Whether you have spilt a few drops of coffee, or had a minor accident with some grubby fingerprints, or even just a shoe scuff mark, sometimes only small areas of your wallpaper need cleaning.

For these small, yet sometimes very noticeable, smudges or marks, there are two different DIY ways in which you can make your wallpaper look new once again.

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Using an art-gum eraser

Unless you are an avid artist, you may not know what an art-gum eraser is, or even where to purchase one. However, they are actually quite a common tool in the art world, and therefore can be purchased from almost any art shop or other shop which sells art supplies.

Often coming in either brown or transparent colours, art-gum erasers are not bound to specific tasks via their colours- this is merely based on preference.

So, what are art-gum erasers? Also known as gum erasers, they are a type of eraser which is made out of rubber, however they often have a much softer feel than other typical rubber erasers.

When they are rubbed against a surface, they have a tendency to crumble, however this is a very natural process for these types of art rubbers as it helps them absorb the graphite which they are usually used to erase.

However, this process is absolutely essential for helping aid the removal of smudges or marks from your wallpaper. As a result of this crumbling texture, art-gum erasers no not tear up your wallpaper when erasing your smudges ad marks, rather they tear themselves up instead. This makes art gum erasers perfect for use on your wallpaper, no matter how delicate it is.

Yet, although the crumbling nature of art-gum erasers is an essential requirement for them to be used on wallpaper- or any other type of delicate papers for that matter- they do not often last as long as typical erasers as a result of their crumbling.

However, although this may be a major problem for artists, for removing smudges from your wallpaper several art-gum erasers may need to purchased anyway in order to remove a smudge or mark, depending on its individual size.

Consequently, although art-gum erasers can be used on a whole host of different wallpapers, you must be very gentle and delicate when rubbing out the smudges and/or marks in order to ensure that you do not inadvertently damage your wallpaper.

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Pro Tip:

If your smudge and/or mark begins to taint the colour of your art-gum eraser and therefore works to spread the smudge and/or mark instead of removing it, simply rub out the tainted part of the eraser on a separate piece of paper until it begins to be transparent again. This will ensue that your art-gum eraser is removing the smudge and/or mark, rather than merely spreading it instead.

Using a plain slice of bread

Now, I know this may seem like a very silly and perhaps even crazy method of cleaning smudges from your wallpaper, however it is one that has been tried and tested for, quite literally, over a century!

From the pages of The Good Housekeeper in 1839, the best way to clean your wallpaper if there are fingerprints or smudges is to:

‘sweep off lightly all the dust with clean cloths, bound over a long-handled broom, then rub the paper with stale bread–cut the crust off very thick, and wipe straight down from the top, then begin at the top again, and so on.’

From information provided by Victorian Passage.com, it is obvious that cleaning your wallpaper with a plain slice of bread is a method that not only works, but has also lasted the test of time too!

However, if you still would prefer a more modern way of cleaning your wallpaper, using an art-gum eraser to simply rub away your smudges and/or marks is an easy way of achieving this. There are also other, and stronger, ways of removing marks from your wallpaper as detailed in our blog ‘Step-by-step: How to DIY clean washable wallpaper’.

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What should I NOT use to clean my wallpaper with?

After learning that you can use typical white bread to clean smudges and/or marks from your wallpaper, you may be wondering what you can’t use to clean your wallpaper with- after all, if bread can be used, what else can?

However, there are some thigs which can damage your wallpaper, as a result of excessive scrubbing or other variables, which may flake, scratch, or even tear your wallpaper.

Some of the cleaning products which you must definitely not use on any type of wallpaper, whether it is strong and durable, or delicate and weak are:

Soft scrubs
Scouring powders
Scrubbing pads
Outdoor brushes
Any other cleaning product which is not delicate enough for your walls

If any of the above products are used on your wallpaper, they are likely to damage your wallpaper either subtly, or eve catastrophically, causing a much bigger problem than a slight smudge and/or mark on your wallpaper.

Below is a quick video instruction on how to remove smudges from wallpaper: