How to remove wallpaper with a steamer

Prepare your room

Removing wallpaper can get messy, pieces of wallpaper will have glue on them that may stick to surfaces you don’t want it to, so make sure you cover any areas you don’t want damaging. 

Get your steamer ready

Place your steamer on a piece of wood or metal to prevent it from damaging the floor underneath it. Next, fill up the steamer with water, using warmer tap water can reduced boiling time. Now you can switch on your machine.

Score the wallpaper

While your wallpaper steamer is heating up, use a wallpaper scoring tool, this allows steam to get through the paper and to the glue on the wall, easier and quicker. Careful though, pressing to hard could damage your walls.

Start steaming the wallpaper

Once your steamer is heated up, carefully hold the steam plate over the paper for 1-2 minutes, taking it away carefully and moving it to a new area, you can start to scrap the wallpaper off with a putty knife. Make sure not to apply too much pressure as this could damage your plaster underneath. If you’re struggling to remove some pieces of wallpaper reapply the steamer to that section and try scraping again. Older wallpaper may require longer steaming. 

Once you have removed all the wallpaper, gently run your putty knife over your wall to ensure no glue of small pieces of wallpaper remains.  Doing this creates a smooth and ideal surface for applying a new layer of wallpaper.

Repair and prep

Once all removed, you’re ready to prep your walls – find our handy guide on how to prep your walls here.