Inside: Learn these simple tips to get crayons off the wall, as well as gentle ways to respond when your child colours on the wall and how to prevent it in the first place.
Cleaning crayon off the walls fast
No matter how well you try to supervise your kids with crayons, it might just happen that they colour on the walls. Now you have to figure out how to remove crayon from the wall (and try to stay patient no matter how upset you are).
Don’t worry, these cleaning tips work, and afterwards I’m going to give you a gentle parenting approach to use to stay calm next time this happens, plus how to avoid it.
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Cleaning tips to get crayon off the wall
Before you try any of these cleaning tips to remove crayon from the wall make sure to test a small area. Depending on the wall and paint type and the products you use, some of these products might be too rough. You don’t want to take the paint off with the crayon!
For the most part that’s not a problem, but it’s always a good idea to test to make sure you won’t create any further damage.
#1. Baking soda
Baking soda truly is amazing! Take some baking soda to a damp cloth and scrub the crayon marks. The roughness of the baking soda will help to get the crayon off, think of it like exfoliating.
#2. Vinegar
Another product you likely already have in your pantry. You can use a cloth or old toothbrush wet with vinegar to scrub the walls.
#3. Mr Clean Magic Eraser
Make sure to wear gloves, but Mr Clean Magic Eraser worked well for me to get crayon off the walls. You can buy them here.
#4. Toothpaste
Believe it or not, toothpaste can remove crayon from the wall! You just have to make sure you’re not using the gel kind of toothpaste and it should be able to scrub the crayon away. Toothpaste has even been known to get permanent marker off the walls.
#5. Pencil eraser
Try an ordinary eraser for pencils to get the crayon off the walls, just make sure to start slow and gentle so you don’t accidentally remove the paint too.
#5. WD-40
Yup, this strong chemical can work to get crayon off the walls too. Spray some WD-40 on a cloth or paper towel and then wipe the crayon marks.
#6. Hair dryer
This one makes sense once you think about it – crayons melt so when you heat up the crayon marks using a hair dryer they will start to become a liquid and you can easily wipe them off.
Try one of these methods to get the crayon off the walls. It might take some time depending on how much colouring happened, but eventually it won’t be noticeable anymore.
Some of these methods may leave your walls looking a little damp, but after it dries completely it should be fine.
If your child also got crayon all over their clothes, make sure to check out this article.
And before you go, just some gentle parenting advice about how to react when you find your child has coloured on the walls and how to prevent it from happening again.
How to respond when your child colours on the walls
When you walk in the room and find your child has coloured on the walls the best thing to do is to stay calm.
Most likely they already know they weren’t supposed to do it, and they might be expecting you to yell at them.
Take a deep breath and you can say something like, “Let’s clean this up,” if you are too upset to talk about it just yet.
Encourage your child to help you in the cleaning but avoid saying anything like, “How could you do this!” or “I’m never letting you have crayons anymore!”
These words will hurt and won’t help actually prevent it in the future. Just stay calm and focus on cleaning up the mess together.
Then you can talk about why it wasn’t ok for them to do that (if they’re old enough to understand) and that it’s important to only colour on the paper.
At the same time though, acknowledge that they probably shouldn’t be allowed to have crayons unsupervised, they’ve shown you that’s not something you should trust them with yet so from now on they will need supervision until they’re older.
How to prevent your toddler from colouring on the walls
To prevent future colouring on the walls there are a few things you can do:
- Always supervise their crayon use and put them away where they cannot be reached when they’re not using them.
- Count how many crayons you give them so when you put them away you know exactly how many should be returned (no stragglers that end up being used when you’re not looking).
- Tape butcher paper on the wall outside or fence so they can colour vertically which is a different experience than colouring with paper on a horizontal surface.
- Avoid getting super angry when you found they’ve coloured on the walls, otherwise it might encourage them to be sneakier about it next time so they don’t get in trouble
Conclusion
One of these strategies will surely work to get the crayon off your walls, it just might take time and elbow grease to really get it all off.
Post Related to Removing Crayon from the Wall
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The Cleaning Tips You Need to Remove Crayon From The Wall
