How to remove paint from linoleum

Linoleum is a soft, del­i­cate and not resis­tant to mechan­i­cal dam­age mate­r­i­al. At the same time, it is very com­mon, as it is inex­pen­sive, easy to care for. Dur­ing the repair, it is enough to cov­er the linoleum with a film to pro­tect it from paint ingress. But if she still stained the coat­ing, you need to know how to quick­ly and with­out harm to the coat­ing to elim­i­nate it.

Types of linoleum

The type of linoleum itself also affects how to wipe off the paint:

1. If the mate­r­i­al is cheap, then its top lay­er is made of polyvinyl chlo­ride, thixotrop­ic paint and var­nish. Such linoleum does not tol­er­ate sol­vents, which con­tain chlo­ri­nat­ed hydro­car­bons and nitro com­pounds. If you use these tools, then there is a risk of acci­den­tal­ly eras­ing the pro­tec­tive var­nish from the linoleum.

2. Com­mer­cial, semi-com­mer­cial linoleum has a melamine resin or polyurethane film. This mate­r­i­al is used in pub­lic places. Clean­ing such a coat­ing is sim­pli­fied, but there is still a chance of dam­ag­ing its sur­face.

Regard­less of the type of linoleum, it must be cleaned quick­ly — oth­er­wise the pat­tern from the sur­face of the mate­r­i­al will dis­ap­pear, and an ugly white spot will appear instead.

Atten­tion! Hot water can­not be used to remove dirt, oth­er­wise it will destroy the shine of the linoleum sur­face.

How to remove a fresh paint stain

There are sev­er­al ways to help you quick­ly get rid of a fresh stain.

1. 
   Sol­vent White spir­it, refined gaso­line, ammo­nia. It is enough to wet a soft cloth with a sol­vent and wipe the stain from the sur­face of the linoleum. How­ev­er, care must be tak­en, as the active chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion risks dam­ag­ing the mate­r­i­al. It is best to pre-test the sol­vent on an incon­spic­u­ous area of ​​linoleum and make sure that the col­or and tex­ture are pre­served.

2. 
   Con­di­tion­er for wash­ing clothes. It can be used instead of a sol­vent. Mix the con­di­tion­er with water in equal pro­por­tions, soak a cloth in it and apply it to the sur­face of the linoleum. Once the paint is soft, start rub­bing the stain until it is com­plete­ly gone.

3. 
   Ace­tone. It is nec­es­sary to moist­en a cot­ton swab in the select­ed prod­uct and light­ly wipe the stain. The remains of the prod­uct are removed with a damp cloth. If the linoleum is too sen­si­tive to the effects of chem­istry, then the max­i­mum time it comes into con­tact with ace­tone is up to 2 min­utes.

4. 
   Soap solu­tion. It is nec­es­sary to soak the shav­ings of laun­dry soap in water and add a lit­tle soda. The pro­ce­dure is the same: wet a rag, wipe the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area with it, remove paint residues with a damp cloth.

5. 
   table vine­gar. Add the vine­gar solu­tion to the fab­ric and start rub­bing the paint stain. If paint remains on the sur­face of the linoleum, use a knife.

If a small drop of paint has just appeared on the linoleum, do not rub it with a nap­kin or rag. First, blot it with paper or a cloth to remove most of the paint.

Next, take a wood­en stick, attach a cot­ton swab to its end and remove the stain, being care­ful not to rub it at the edges.

What to do if the stain has dried out

If the paint has already had time to soak in and hard­en, try sim­ply cov­er­ing the stain with car­pet or fur­ni­ture.

You can try to cut off the top lay­er of linoleum, but in this case there is a high risk of com­plete­ly spoil­ing the coat­ing. It is nec­es­sary to take a sharply sharp­ened knife and care­ful­ly cut the stain so that only the top lay­er of the paint­ed mate­r­i­al is exposed. Care­ful prun­ing will ensure that the defect is invis­i­ble.

If the paint has spread in a thin lay­er, try using a scraper or brush — but part of the dec­o­ra­tive coat­ing will also peel off.

Anoth­er option to get rid of a thin lay­er of paint is to soak a cloth in sol­vent and apply it to the stain for a short time. It is not nec­es­sary to hold the fab­ric for too long, oth­er­wise the coat­ing will be dam­aged.

You can use ace­tone:

1. Soak a cloth in ace­tone and apply it to the stain for 10 min­utes.

2. After peel­ing off the paint, use a met­al brush or scraper — but so as not to dam­age the sur­face of the linoleum.

If the linoleum is already old, then it is prob­a­bly worn out, and there are many small cracks on its sur­face. In this sit­u­a­tion, acci­den­tal­ly spilled paint will soak faster and deep­er. In this case, it is bet­ter to sim­ply update the linoleum.

How to fix black streaks on linoleum

Usu­al­ly this prob­lem is typ­i­cal for com­mer­cial linoleums.

There are sev­er­al ways to remove stripes from shoes:

1. reg­u­lar school eras­er;

2. a solu­tion of water with soda or deter­gent;

3. ammo­nia;

4. lemon juice;

5. hydro­gen per­ox­ide.

If you are not sure how a par­tic­u­lar linoleum will react to the select­ed prod­uct, test it on an incon­spic­u­ous area.

Features and nuances

If water-based paint gets on the sur­face of the linoleum, then it is enough to wipe it with a soft cloth or an ordi­nary paper tow­el. Such a tool is based on water, so it eas­i­ly and quick­ly lags behind linoleum with­out leav­ing the slight­est trace.

How­ev­er, the mat­ter becomes more com­pli­cat­ed if oil paint based on dry­ing oil gets on the sur­face of the linoleum. To elim­i­nate pol­lu­tion, you must:

1. Remove the fresh top lay­er of the stain with a paper tow­el, which has not yet had time to be absorbed.

2. Soak a rag in sun­flower oil and place it on the remain­ing dirt.

3. Pre­pare a soapy solu­tion to remove paint residue by adding soda ash.

Dried oil paint can be removed with tur­pen­tine.

As for ink paint, it strong­ly eats into linoleum. At the same time, for the man­u­fac­ture of such water-based paints, agents are used that increase the flu­id­i­ty of the solu­tion. Use soda ash or a chem­i­cal eras­er to remove ink.

If the ink stain is fresh, it is enough:

1. Blot the paint with­out flood­ing the stain with water.

2. Let her dry.

3. Take a clean­ing agent, add vine­gar and wet a stiff brush with the solu­tion.

You can also use a weak solu­tion of white­ness or ammo­nia. The col­or­ing com­po­nents after oxi­da­tion will become trans­par­ent, and the rem­nants of the prod­uct should be quick­ly washed off with cold water.

Final­ly, if var­nish has got on the sur­face of the linoleum, then use a solu­tion of water with ace­tone and vine­gar to remove the stain. If the stain is small, then reg­u­lar nail pol­ish remover will do. In the case of pentaftel var­nish, the sit­u­a­tion is more com­pli­cat­ed: there is a risk of dam­ag­ing the pat­tern and tex­ture. You can use dichloroethane if the linoleum is pub­lic.