How to remove wallpaper without damaging paint

Wallpaper removal has a reputation built entirely on the wrong decade. The stories about steamers, scoring tools, buckets of vinegar and a weekend lost to scraping are stories about pasted vinyl paper from the seventies, glued to unprimed drywall.

Everything we sell comes off dry. So does almost everything else sold in the last fifteen years. Here is how to do it properly, and what to do if you open a corner and discover you are dealing with the old stuff after all.

First, find out what you have

Lift a bottom corner with a fingernail or a thin blade and pull up an inch.

• It comes away dry, in one piece, and the back is a slightly fibrous paper. Non-woven, paste-the-wall. Easiest case.
• It comes away dry and the back is smooth and tacky. Peel and stick. Also easy, slightly slower.
• It tears into small pieces and leaves a paper layer behind. Older pasted paper. Different method, keep reading.
• It will not lift at all and feels like plastic. Vinyl on paper backing, probably decades old. Plan for a wet removal.

Removing paste-the-wall non-woven

This is the one that feels like a trick the first time.

1. Take out the plates on switches and outlets and turn off the power to them.
2. Start at a bottom corner of one panel. Ease a thin blade under the edge until you can get a finger behind it.
3. Pull the panel downward and toward yourself at a shallow angle, keeping your hand close to the wall. Not out from the wall.
4. Keep going in one steady motion. A full-height panel usually comes off as a single sheet.
5. Repeat panel by panel.

Non-woven does not need soaking because the material itself does not absorb water, which is also why it never expanded on the wall in the first place. There may be a thin film of dried adhesive left. Wipe it with a sponge and clean water and let it dry.

Removing peel and stick

Slower, because the adhesive is on the paper rather than on the wall.

1. Warm a corner with a hairdryer on medium for ten or fifteen seconds. Warm, not hot, and keep it moving.
2. Lift the corner and pull downward at a shallow angle, hand close to the wall.
3. When a section resists, stop pulling and warm it again. Force is what pulls paint.
4. Any adhesive residue comes off with a cloth and warm soapy water, or a little isopropyl alcohol on a stubborn patch. Test any solvent on a hidden area first.

The angle is the whole technique. Pulling out from the wall at ninety degrees puts the force into the paint. Pulling down against the wall puts it into the adhesive bond, which is what you want to break.

Removing older pasted paper

If the test corner tore and left backing behind, you have a wet job.

1. Score the surface lightly with a perforating tool, pressing much less hard than feels useful. The goal is to let water through the top layer, not to cut into the drywall.
2. Mix warm water with a capful of dish soap, or use a proprietary stripper. Wet the wall generously with a sponge or a pump sprayer.
3. Wait fifteen minutes. This is the step everybody skips and it is the step that does the work.
4. Wet it again. Wait again.
5. Scrape with a wide, flexible putty knife held at a low angle. If it is not lifting easily, it needs more water, not more force.
6. Wash the wall down afterward to remove old paste. Any residue left behind will show through new paint or stop new paper from sticking.

Protecting the paint underneath

What decides whether paint survives is mostly decided before the paper ever went up:

• Paint that was fully cured. Latex takes about three weeks to cure, not the day it takes to dry. Paper hung on week-old paint takes the paint with it.
• A primed wall. Paper hung directly on bare drywall bonds to the paper facing of the board. That will always tear.
• Sound paint to begin with. Flaking paint under wallpaper is flaking paint after wallpaper.

During removal, three habits matter: pull downward at a shallow angle, warm rather than yank, and stop the moment you hear the particular crackle of paint letting go. If you hear it, back off, warm that area, and approach it from the other direction.

Fixing the small damage that does happen

Expect a few spots, usually around outlets and corners where the paper was pressed hardest.

• Lifted paint edges: sand lightly with 220 grit until the edge is feathered, then spot prime.
• Torn drywall facing: seal it with a shellac or oil-based primer before you fill, or the joint compound will soak in and raise the fibers further.
• Small dents: fill, sand, prime, and do not paint over unprimed filler.

Before you hang the next one

Wash the wall with clean water, no detergent residue. Let it dry fully, which is longer than you think in a humid room. Prime any repairs. If the wall has been stripped back to bare patches, prime the whole wall rather than the patches, so the surface takes adhesive evenly.

Then measure it again. Stripping a wall occasionally reveals that it is a different size than you thought, and it is much cheaper to find that out now.