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Home >>Professional Decorating>>Decorating Museum>>Paint Splashes on Fabrics
Decorating Defects - their cause and cure
Paint Splashes on Fabrics
The importance of protecting all furniture and furnishings with dust sheets in a room while redecoration is going on has already been emphasised earlier in this work, but in spite of these necessary precautions it may happen, at times, that carpets, curtains, upholstery ,and other fabrics receive splashes of paint or distemper.
If paint splashes are dealt with at once, their removal should cause little difficulty, but if they are allowed to dry and harden, some damage may be caused to the fabric in attempting to eliminate them. Most painters use turpentine or white spirit for the purpose, but with some colours there is a risk that the stain may be spread further, owing to the dispersing action of the turpentine. A better medium is as follows:
Carbon tetrachloride.......3 parts
Toluol....................2 parts
Butyl acetate.............2 parts
Ethyl acetate.............2 parts
Alcohol...................1 part
This will remove paint, oil, cellulose lacquer, or enamel, or grease spots from fabrics but must not be allowed to come into contact with painted, polished, or lacquered surfaces, which will be attacked by the solvents in the film.
If splashes of distemper or oil-bound water paint fall on fabrics, it is probably best to allow them to dry and harden and then remove them with a stiff clothes brush.
A slight stain may be left after brushing but it is usually possible to get rid of this by means of a damp cloth. Any attempt to remove the splashes while they are still wet will generally succeed only in dispersing the distemper over a wider area and driving the pigment deeper into the weave of the fabric.