How to remove paper tape from walls. Here is the most effective method

How can you remove paper tape from walls? It is likely, if you have searched online for this article and if you have decided to read it, that you are struggling with paper tape stuck on a wall of your apartment, your office, your garage, and so on.

Why is there paper tape on the wall? Well, there can actually be many different explanations, all of them more or less legitimate.

Maybe you’re painting the walls, and then diligently applied paper tape to the door and windowsills, along the baseboards, around fixed mirrors and shelves, not to mention the light fixtures.

Or maybe you took an extra step, deciding to make two-tone walls, using paper tape just to divide the colourful sections from each other.

Or, you may have used paper tape on the wall to hang a poster (next time you might want to use double-sided tape) or maybe to mark the wall without actually staining the plaster (in fact, you can write on paper tape very comfortably, with both pens and pencils).

In short, for one reason or another you have tape on your walls: how can you remove paper tape from the wall without damaging the plaster beneath, and without leaving any annoying glue residue behind? Let’s have a look at the most effective technique together.

Paper tape: what is it made of? Its peculiar characteristics

First, it is good to know our enemy, or in this case, in an absolutely benevolent way, the paper adhesive tape hat is stuck on your wall.

You should know that paper tape is designed exactly as industrial masking double-sided adhesive tape, and therefore does not have the same functions as a normal PVC or PPL adhesive tape: it is not typically used to stick things together, but instead to “mask them” during painting work.

This is to say that, by itself, paper tape is meant to be removed easily, without any particular resistance and without leaving any glue residue on the underlying surface.

When to remove paper tape

Thus, we established that paper tape is designed specifically for masking operations, to help painters and paint workers in different sectors and fields. But when is it the best time to remove the tape? Well, let’s consider the specific case of paper tape placed on a recently painted wall.

After having used the brush or roll to make a stroke of paint, admiring the freshly whitened room, it is actually already possible, even recommended, to remove the paper tape (unless additional coats of colour are needed). Why is it best to remove paper tape immediately?

Simple: the fresh colour will not give any resistance to the paper tape, which can then be removed with the confidence of being certain not to “take away” even the smallest portion of colour.

But that’s not all. It should also be said that paper tape, if long forgotten on a wall, could end up depositing part of its glue on it, due to the passage of time, heat, humidity and so on.

How to remove paper tape from walls

Let’s say you’ve just finished painting a room, so it’s time to remove the tape.

Nothing easier: all you have to do is remove the tape slowly, without tugging, gently, so as not to ruin the colour below. The best method is to tilt the tape slightly, to form an angle of 45 degrees between the painted surface and that of the tape itself (doing so, “cutting” the colour will be easier).

What if you were dealing with old paper tape, left on the wall for days, weeks and months, and maybe subjected to the sun’s rays? Well, in this exceptional situation, there may be a few more difficulties in removing the paper tape, which could break off and/or leave glue residue on the plaster.

However, the solution is at hand: in fact, it will be enough to arm yourself with a hair dryer and to heat the tape well, thus making its layer of strong double-sided adhesive softer. This will make it easier to remove the tape.

This process, however, may leave some glue residue on the plaster. In this case, our advice is to further heat the remnants of industrial adhesive tape left on the wall, and then gently remove them using an old plastic card as a scraper to remove the glue residue without scratching the wall.

In the case of particularly stubborn glue residues, it may be possible to use a cloth slightly soaked in a water and white vinegar (and possibly lemon juice) solution to rub the affected area.

At this point you’ll just need start working, keeping at hand a hairdryer, a plastic card, and a clean cloth on hand. Removing paper tape from the wall will be a breeze!