How to Remove Spray Paint
When working on tasks that require the use of spray paint, it's going to be tough to avoid getting some points on your skin or other surroundings.
Paint thinners and solvents can be used to remove spray paint from your skin and other things, but for the surface, they might cause severe skin irritation.
Instead of relying on these solvents and massive duty fixes.
What you need to know when learning how to use a paint sprayer is that accidents happen when blasts of colors stray outside its intended area leaving you with stray steaks on the surrounding surfaces such as your concrete driveway, metal hardware or your skin.
In these cases, water alone cannot be used to remove the spray paint.
This is because the binding agent in water-based paints fuse together and harden while the paint dries and makes it more resistant to water.
Dried oil based spray paint is more difficult to remove since the natural oil binding agents in it do not dissolve in water.
Things you will need:
There are several ways to remove spray paint from any particular surface:
How to get spray paint off hands and skin
Remove water-based spray or oil-based spray paint from your hands and other exposed areas with grease and a few natural, non-toxic household products that you may have on hand.
Materials needed:
Apply vegetable oil
Cooking spray or baby oil to the paint. First, soak a cotton ball in the oil. Use the cotton ball to dab the skin with oil. If you are using cooking spray, then you can spray it on your skin.
Rub the paint off your skin
Rub your skin but not so hard so that you don't hurt your skin. The color should start to thin out immediately. If you are having any difficulties, trying to scrub the area using a cloth.
Cloth comes in hand if you have a spray-painted skin that is not easy to clean in a sink like your feet,
Wash your skin with hand soap
After you have thinned out the spray paint, grab some hand soap, and lather the area then rinse. This will help you were away from the residual spray paints and oil.
Try washing with the solvent at least twice if any traces of color remain or if your hands are still oily.
Use a pumice soap; If the oil didn’t remove all of the spray paint, then you can also try the pumice liquid soap or pumice bar soap.
Any method that you do using pumice soap should work but be cautious with the pumice if you have sensitive skin.
Pumice soaps are used to remove grift from jobs like car maintenance and grease. Pumice bars are used to clean feet and helps to remove paint from your hands and skin.
Check this video out:
How to remove spray paint from plastic
It is a bit of a tricky task to remove spray paint from plastic. It may be easy to extract colors from metals, ceramic, wood but plastic requires careful attention to keep the material intact.
There are solvents out there that damage or even break the plastic, many people skip this part when learning how to use a paint sprayer and learn the hard way.
You have to make sure you use a plastic safe paint removal products. The following are the methods that can be used to remove spray paint from plastic:
Step 1: Use a paint scraper
Using a paint scraper may help to remove the paint from plastic products but not all the time. For this, a razor blade or a putty knife would be suitable.
With either a scraper, however, makes sure you do not apply too much pressure on you may end up scratching up the surface while trying to to get rid of the paint.
Be careful when using a razor blade, you should use it only as a last resort when you are dealing with dried up thick paint
Step 2: Try vegetable oil
You can use vegetable oil to loosen the paint on plastic surfaces. Place a small amount of vegetable oil on a rag and rub the oil onto the affected surface until the colors start to come away.
If the paint does not come away after several attempts, it is best that you should try other stronger solvents.
Step 3: Use a nail polish remover
Place a sufficient nail polish remover on the paint and rub it using a towel. If the color doesn't come out as well, you can leave the solvent in place for five to ten minutes before you rerun it.
Step 4: Apply denatured alcohol
Paint thinner will probably have no effects on paint spots unless they are still wet. But when paints that are stronger do not succumb to nail polish remover or vegetable oil, denatured alcohol can be useful for removal.
You should note that this-this will work for latex based paints and not oil based paints
Denatures alcohols possess more than health risks when it comes to removing spray paint from plastic than the other solvents.
Therefore, you have to be extra careful if you are using denatured alcohol to remove paints and be prepared.
Before you apply the solution to the color, make sure you wear rubber gloves to protect your hands from direct contact.
You should also wear a mask and work in a well-ventilated space if possible and if not use an electric fan for movement of the air within the workspace.
Use the denatured alcohol and try it on a small area to make sure it will not damage the plastic.
When you confirmed it is safe, then place a certain amount of the solvent on the paint and then wait for few minutes to let the paint dissolve.
If the color starts to wrinkle, scrape it off by using a plastic putty knife. Take a drag and use it to scrub the area until the paint is removed.
Step 5: Scrub the area
After removing a certain amount of spray from the plastic’s surface pour some warm water on a sponge and then add a detergent.
Use the sponge to scrub the areas to remove the alcohol or any other chemical used as well as any residual of the paint.
If you follow well the above steps on how to remove spray paint from plastic, you will end up with good results.
Check out the below video for tips:
How to remove spray paint from concrete
Concrete is porous, and it readily absorbs spray paint. This is a vital subject when you are learning how to use a paint sprayer.
You will need some heavy duty materials and supplies to remove it. Two techniques that are used to remove spray paint from concrete could be power washing or cleaning with Trisodium Phosphate.
These two can banish splatters and streaks from the exterior and interior concrete surfaces like driveways, basement floors, and patios.
Power washing entails blasting the stain away by using a jet of water from the pressure washer; It should be reserved for outdoors stains of any size because it can soak and damage indoor structures such as wiring, insulation, and walls.
Trisodium Phosphate can be applied to paint stained concrete outdoors or indoors.
The technique requires manually scrubbing, and it is also more labor intensive than the power washing. If you have access to the power washer, you can limit the TSP technique outdoors to small stains.
Materials and tools to be used:
Procedures to be followed:
Step 1
The easiest method to remove spray paint stains from outdoor concrete is by using a pressure washer.
You will have to connect its high-pressure hose to the high-pressure inlet on the washing machine, attach your garden hose to water inlet on your washer.
You have to know that the smaller the angle of the spray nozzle the narrow and more intense the jet stream.
When spray nozzles have an angle higher than 15 degrees, water blasts a more gentle flow of water that isn't strong enough to remove the paint.
A spray nozzle that has an angle less than 15 degrees blasts a more forceful jet of water that can increase the risk of damage to the underlying concrete.
Step 2
After donning the safety goggles. You can turn on the water supply and stand three or four feet away from the stained area then start the pressure washer.
Blast water over the stained area by sweeping back and forth motions. After 15 seconds the powerful water streams have to force the spray paint from the concrete.
When it fails, you can move one foot closer to the stained concrete and spray again.
You should always position yourself not closer than one foot from the surface to prevent water from ricocheting off the cover and on your face
Step 3
For stains of any size being indoors or small outdoors, head to a very ventilated area and put on gloves, a respiratory mask and safety goggles.
Dilute a half teaspoon of Trisodium phosphate, put it in two gallons of warm water in a five-gallon bucket
Step 4
Dunk a stiff bristle brush into the trisodium phosphate solution and then scrub the stained concrete to loosen the paint.
If the color doesn't come away, let the trisodium phosphate solution dell on the pavement for like 20 minutes, and then you try to scrub again.
Step 5
For the outdoors concrete you should hose down the cleaned area, and for indoors concrete rinse the paint debris with a mop and plain water.
Dry indoor pavement using a cloth or a dry mop. These are the simple steps one on how to remove spray paint from concrete.
Check out the below video for more tips:
Wrap Up
There are different ways you can get spray paint off, but it really comes down to the material that the paint is on. For the most part, all the techniques listed on this article can apply to most scenarios. Just be careful not to ruin your car or plastic chair by using strong chemicals!
