Graffiti Cleaning and Removal

Graffiti cleaning and removal is not something most people look forward to. Seeing graffiti on your property can really spoil your day because it’s expensive to remove both in terms of time and cost.

Tags, scrawls, scribbles – whatever you want to call them – when graffiti appears in your neighbourhood, it’s worth removing it as quickly as possible. The longer you leave it, the more chance there is that more will follow, and the more graffiti there is in your area, the faster the value of your house will fall. Many councils aim to remove graffiti within days of it appearing – of course hours would be even better – to stop other taggers following suit.

A Banksy, of course, could increase the value of your house, but, let’s face it, him paying you a visit is very unlikely to happen – and even Banksy’s graffiti art has been painted over or removed in the last year. Essentially, you want to remove graffiti as quickly as possible.

But how?

First of all, you need to keep your eyes open for graffiti. Ask others in your neighbourhood to join in on a ‘graffiti watch’. You can’t remove graffiti if you don’t know it’s there.

There are several ways to remove graffiti, though none of them are especially easy or cheap.

Paint over it

The cheapest and quickest approach is to simply paint over the graffiti. Depending on the size of the graffiti and the wall, painting over it can have varying levels of effectiveness. If you simply paint over the area that has been tagged you are in danger of creating a patchwork effect on your wall; especially if the wall is defaced often.

If painting in the only option for you, take a chip of paint from the wall and have a new pot remixed to that colour, rather than painting with the original – much brighter – paint. This will give you more chance of not having a patchwork wall.

Set yourself a limit for painting: do you want to paint the whole wall, so it’s all clean again, or do you just want to paint over the graffiti?

Chemical removal

Back in the day, incredibly powerful, effective chemicals stripped the graffiti from the wall, but, quite often, would also take the wall paint with it, or start to destroy the wall itself. The same chemicals are still available to us today, but consider whether it’s something you’re willing to do time and again.

Eco-friendly approach

A new generation of organic graffiti-removal product is on the market which won’t cost the Earth. It is about the same price as using paint or the chemical removers, but it’s safer for the environment and offers little health risk.

Post-graffiti removal

When you have removed the graffiti, you may want to think about how to stop taggers defacing your area again. There are several products on the market now that seal painted, brick and concrete surfaces, and which make it much easier to remove graffiti should it appear again.

Why not involve your local schools or artists – or even graffiti artists themselves – to create images for public walls that are regular targets for taggers? By taking the surfaces back and adding your own images or art to them, taggers are less likely to deface property.

If it’s your own house wall that is regularly the victim on graffiti, you could plant climbers, so the wall is covered and less easy to destroy.

With a little elbow grease and imagination, you could see the end of graffiti in your area.