Acrylic paint is often used by craftsmen when carrying out repairs or by artists when painting. In both cases, people often have to deal with stains on clothing or other surfaces. During the cleaning process, you have to face problems, since the paint contains a polymer that hardens very quickly and does not dissolve well in water when washing.
Most people don’t know how to clean acrylic paint, so they often throw away things damaged by it, but this is not at all necessary. The specific method should be selected based on the degree of damage by the chemical composition. If there is only one stain and it is small, you can get by with soap and dishwashing detergent. In difficult situations, you will have to resort to more aggressive methods.
How to remove wood paint?
Boiling linseed oil will help you gently and very effectively remove paint from wood. To do this, heat the oil and apply it to the paint stain. Leave, then remove with a spatula along with the paint. For older paint, a paste of linseed oil and tripoli (a loose opal sedimentary rock) is suitable.
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What you need to clean stains
Even if the structure is painted by professionals, traces of acrylic will remain (on the brush, roller, hands). To clean any surface (wood, carpet, wall) you will need special equipment:
- rags;
- gloves (rubberized);
- sponges;
- brushes (preferably they have hard teeth);
- something sharp (knife, blade);
- construction mask, goggles (they are needed as personal protective equipment).
Cleaning up acrylic paint is much easier when the stain is fresh. If the acrylic mark was made recently, you can wash it off within an hour with plain water. It is necessary to dip a sponge in a container of water, then gently wipe the stain with it. To make the cleansing effect more pronounced, it is recommended to use detergent and soap.
Paint stains on upholstery or carpets should be removed before they dry.
Within 24 hours after the stain has been placed, acrylic can be cleaned with water, a brush, or a degreaser. Adding a small amount of soda or vinegar to the water will help speed up the process of removing paint from the surface. This solution wipes away the dirt.
After painting is finished, the question arises: how can you wash your brush from acrylic paint that has dried to the bristles? This is quite easy to do (if you don’t forget about the dirty brush for a few days). You can wash your brush off acrylic paint by immersing it in hot water for half an hour. After 30 minutes, take out the brushes and wash them with soapy water. If the brushes have hardened, acetone will help soften them.
If the methods were not effective
If you tried everything, but in the end nothing worked, you shouldn’t give up. How to remove silicone residue from floor tiles without damaging the seams? There are more radical and effective methods for removing these types of defects.
Heating
A simple hair dryer for drying hair will be an excellent substitute for strong products. To do this, apply a concentrated soap solution to the stain, then direct a stream of hot air at it. This will make the paint soft and easy to remove.
Special paint remover
This substance is specially designed to remove any paint from completely different surfaces, including furniture. Thus, it is considered the only universal remedy.
Important! Be careful when working with this wash, as it has a very unpleasant and pungent odor and, due to its toxicity, can corrode the skin of your hands. In addition, the procedure should be carried out in the fresh air or at least with an open window.
In order to remove the defect, you need to follow the following sequence of actions:
- Moisten a clean rag generously with remover.
- Treat the damaged area and leave for 10 minutes.
- Use a clean rag to remove smudges and remaining paint.
- Wipe the treated clean surface with soapy water, then again with clean water only, and wipe dry.
Additional Information:
This multifunctional coating is used for exterior and interior finishing work. With their use, original suspended ceilings are obtained; acrylic is used for painting nails, covering small models and figurines. There are no restrictions when choosing paint color. The diversity of the palette will captivate every buyer.
Its advantage over other types of paint can be considered the fact that acrylic does not flow after application to vertical surfaces. It fits perfectly, does not form unevenness or streaks.
The most common mistakes
To completely get rid of paint and not damage the linoleum, you need to familiarize yourself with the main mistakes that people make when trying to remove stains:
- Use of abrasive cleaning products. It is possible that they will cope with the coloring composition, but the linoleum will be hopelessly damaged. There will be scratches on it that you will not be able to get rid of.
- Use of substances containing chlorine. The use of such compositions threatens the appearance of white spots on the floor covering.
- Mechanical paint removal. You can try to carefully clean off its top layer to facilitate the penetration of the liquid substance. However, scraping the flooring with the edge of a knife or metal spatula is unacceptable.
Possible methods
Glass is a fragile material, but hard and chemically inert. Therefore, in order to wash paint off glass, you can use different methods:
- The simplest one is mechanical. Since glass is usually scratch-resistant, it can be rubbed with hard sponges or even scraped with a knife.
- Sometimes, to facilitate the process of mechanical removal of smears and drops, preheating is used. But here you need to be careful: a sharp temperature change can cause the glass to burst.
- The chemical method is less labor-intensive. Glass can be treated with various solvents; it will not cause any harm.
Features of removal from various surfaces
Carpet cleaning. If a stain forms, you must act immediately. If the acrylic has not yet dried, you can simply rinse it with water and wipe it off with a rag. You must act carefully, not allowing the paint to penetrate deep into the pile. Movements should be light and jerky. You should absolutely not rub the stain with force, as this will only make it bigger. You can use a solvent when the paint stain is already old.
You must act carefully, not allowing the paint to penetrate deep into the pile.
Cleaning furniture, glass. To clean them you need to use a razor blade. It is positioned at a slight angle to the surface, the edge of the acrylic clings and the paint is pulled off with slow movements. Using this method, old paint can be easily cleaned.
To clean the glass you need to use a razor blade.
Cleaning clothes. To clean a fresh stain, just blot it with a napkin, then moisten the sponge in solvent and remove the residue, after first turning the clothes inside out.
To clean a fresh stain, just blot it with a napkin, then moisten the sponge in solvent and remove the residue.
Prevention measures
Removing stains and paint runs from glass is not a difficult job, but it is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Therefore, it is better to take measures in advance so that you don’t have to scrub anything later:
- When painting window frames, you should use masking tape. It is glued in strips close to the frame. After this, you can start painting - the marks will remain on the tape, and they will be easy to remove by simply removing the pasted strips.
It is not recommended to use regular office tape to protect glass. It will protect glass surfaces no worse than a painter's, but when removed, traces will remain on the surface, which will then take a long time to scrub off.
- If you don’t have tape, you can thickly soap the glass along the frames with laundry soap. After completing the repairs, you will need to wash the windows - traces of paint will be washed off with soap.
- An even more radical and effective method of prevention is to completely seal windows and glazed areas of interior doors with film. Such protection should not be removed until the repair is completed, then the glass will definitely remain clean.
If stains and smudges do appear, it is better to remove them fresh. In this case, much less effort and time will be required.
Why the coating may not wash off well
You need to immediately understand what kind of coloring agent this is and what it is made of. After this, you can answer the question of how to remove acrylic paint.
Acrylic paint is a polymer, water-dispersed composition, which includes copolymers as substances for forming a film. Polymers (translated from Greek) are substances consisting of many parts. In fact, these are very large molecules. Dispersed - formed from several bodies that do not enter into a chemical reaction with each other.
The essence of these explanations is as follows. Acrylic is a complex, environmentally friendly chemical compound. It is produced with the participation of a film former, which is responsible for the curing time of the product.
When painting, drops of paint may end up on the floor, clothing or furniture. Sometimes the brush touches surfaces that there was no need to paint. How to remove drops or flaws in the work depends only on the time that has passed since they hit the objects. The hardening time of the film former is 30-60 minutes.
First aid
If paint gets on any surface, and 60-70 minutes have not yet passed from that moment, problems with cleaning occur extremely rarely. To erase it, you should use any soap, sponge and water. To begin, rub the problem area well and wait about 20 minutes. Next, the stain is washed under running water.
Note! If the acrylic paint has dried out, it can only be cleaned with the addition of baking soda. But, if the contamination is old, this method will not be effective.
Choosing a remedy
You should choose a cleaning agent for acrylic paint based on such factors as the type of surface, the number of layers applied, the adhesion of the paint to a specific material and the type of chemical composition. If you do not take these rules into account, you can easily damage clothing, glass, tiles or other surfaces.
Purchased
Among the purchased products that are created specifically for removing heels from acrylic, we can highlight the Prestige gel remover and universal cleaners. They are more effective, but before using one of them, you should carefully study the cleaning rules so as not to damage clothing or other surfaces on which paint has come in contact.
Folk
To make your own stain cleaner, you can use the following:
- vinegar;
- kerosene;
- Vanish;
- brushes and sponges;
- hot water;
- nail polish remover.
Traditional methods will be most effective if a person starts cleaning before the paint has time to dry. This especially applies to clothing. It is almost impossible to remove acrylic from some types of fabrics. If the stain dries out, even aggressive methods may be useless.
