Children and adults alike have left their creative marks on walls at one point or another, often in the form of pesky pencil marks or drawings.
While it’s a common occurrence, removing pencil marks from walls can be a tricky task, especially when you want to avoid damaging the paint or the underlying surface.
Fortunately, there are several effective methods and simple tricks to safely get pencil marks off walls without taking the paint along with them.
How to Remove Pencil Marks from a Wall?
Find out how to quickly clean your walls with these expert-backed tips.
Things You Should Know
- You can add a fresh coat of paint over the pencil marks if the area is extremely large or the wall is too delicate to wash.
- You can use soap or baking soda and water to clean larger areas. A Magic Eraser can also be used to gently wipe away pencil marks from walls.
- You can use white toothpaste, dough wallpaper cleaner, or rubber erasers for small pencil marks.
1. Soap And Water
Pencil marks can be easily removed with mild dish soap and water. Put a few drops of dish soap in a bowl of warm water.
If there are any pencil or colored pencil marks, gently wipe them away with a clean cloth dipped in the mixture. Let your wall air dry after wiping it with clean water.
Whenever you aren’t sure whether or not your wall can be washed, test it out on a corner with a combination of dish soap and water. You’re good to go if the paint or wallpaper appears to be in good shape and doesn’t wipe off any color.
It is best to stop using soap and water right away if your wallpaper or paint starts flaking off as a result.
2. Rubber Eraser
You can remove pencil marks from your walls without damaging them with a rubber eraser. Simply swipe a rubber eraser gently over the marks on the wall if only a few pencil marks need to be removed.
Make sure you use an eraser carefully if your walls are wallpapered. Too much rubbing could cause the wallpaper to tear or shred. You can use an art gum eraser if you prefer a gentler method.
3. Dough Wallpaper Cleaner
You can use dough cleaner to remove marks from your walls while being gentle on them. You can quickly remove graphite and colored pencil marks from your walls with dough cleaner, similar to Play-Doh.
Create a small ball with dough cleaner and knead it until it’s soft and pliable. In order to remove graphite from the pencil marks, gently roll the ball over them. Non-washable paint can also be cleaned with dough cleaner.
4. Magic Eraser
Make pencil marks disappear by gently wiping them away with a non-abrasive eraser sponge. There are many eraser sponge brands on the market, but Magic Eraser is one of the most popular.
By wetting the sponge, you will activate the cleaning agents, and then you will be able to wipe down the wall with the pencil marks you have drawn. Scrub gently in a circular motion for best results.
A sponge eraser is the ideal cleaning tool for children who use both colored pencils and graphite pencils.
The use of sponges for erasing may cause your wallpaper to peel, so you should avoid them if you have wallpaper.
5. Baking Soda
You can remove marks from your walls by scrubbing them with baking soda. You can make a paste by mixing 1 US tbsp (15 mL) of water with 1/2 tbsp (14 g) of baking soda if your walls are washable.
The paste should be gently rubbed into the wall, then wiped off with a clean cloth. It is possible that baking soda could damage wallpaper or non-washable paint due to its mild abrasive property.
Use baking soda in an inconspicuous spot on your wall if you aren’t sure whether your walls can be washed. Pick a different method if you notice any color transfer onto your cloth or flakes off the paint.
6. Toothpaste
Pencil marks can be quickly removed with white toothpaste. Apply toothpaste to a clean cloth, then rub it gently on your walls. You can reveal your shining walls by wiping off the toothpaste with a clean rag.
It is important that the toothpaste is white, otherwise it won’t be able to remove pencil marks due to its stain-fighting properties.
7. “Try With Caution” Techniques For Crayon And Pencil Marks
Pencil marks and crayon stains can be removed from walls without toothpaste, sponges, or hair dryers if you don’t have any.
Due to various reasons, these cleaning hacks aren’t quite as effective as our top three methods. However, they work in a pinch.
Mayonnaise
The mayonnaise makes a surprisingly effective crayon remover, but let it sit for a few minutes first. The oil present in mayonnaise may also leave an unsightly stain that will require you to clean it all over again.
To test the effectiveness of mayo, apply it to an inconspicuous area before trying to remove marks.
WD-40
In addition, WD-40 works well for removing crayon marks, but rubbing it in tends to make them smear around.
To remove the stain, you’ll need to carefully blot it up, which can be tedious when you have a large area to wash. It’s also possible to get grease stains instead of crayon stains.
Final Words
If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be extremely difficult to remove crayon marks from painted walls. Often, common sense approaches don’t work.
The use of soap and water is not enough to remove set-in crayons, and vinegar, a DIY household cleaner we love, does not work as well.
To remove crayon marks on the wall, you need to take some offbeat measures instead of taking the obvious route.
It’s likely that you won’t need to run to the store to find the answer. In some unexpected places, you can find items you can commonly find around the house that can remove crayon and pencil marks.
