How To Remove House Paint From Car Body? Fixing The Disaster

Well, if you are on this page, we believe, you are now not having a very good mood. You were painting your house or fence, or any other thing in your yard when you suddenly noticed that a lot of paint drops got right onto your car. What a shame! Now you need to quickly come up with the solution to this problem and we will not bother you with long introductions.

Unfortunately, there is no proper all-purpose way to deal with the house paint on the car body because there are different types of paint and there are different conditions for curing. Let’s say, you may have found this page right after you noticed problems or the next day. And this will change the way you can deal with the problem.

So, here’s what we’ll tell you today:

How to clean off house paint from the car body when it’s not cured?
What to do with fully cured house paint on a car body?
What are the safe solvents of paint for a car body?
What are the situations where you will have to repaint the car?

Let’s get started!

House paint is still not cured – can you clean it off?

So, you noticed that the paint drops are there on your car body and the paint is still wet. That’s perfect! Now, you can clean it off using very safe solvents or no solvents at all. It means your car body paint job will not be damaged. Don’t waste your time and immediately get to work to save the paint on your vehicle.

Here’s what you may try doing:

Use a paper towel and try to carefully remove the paint. Be careful – don’t spread the paint all over the body or you can just damage the paint job of your car and have problems with the repair.
If this helps, look carefully at the car body and try to see any other spots of paint you may have overlooked. It’s better to deal with them right now.
If this didn’t help, the paint has already started curing. You will need a non-acetone mixture that can dissolve the house paint and will not affect the car paint. And we should tell you it’s hard to find one.
After you cleaned the spot with non-acetone materials, you should also immediately wash the vehicle to reduce the risks of damage to the car paint job.
If this didn’t help, you will have to choose a more effective and somewhat dangerous material to deal with the paint drops – just keep reading to find out more.

Now, if the paper towel didn’t help or even made things worse, you should stop panicking and rushing. The paint drops have already started curing and ten or fifteen minutes will not change the situation much.

What you need to do now is to get the proper materials. And most likely, you will not have them at home, so you will need to go to the paint store and buy something. Better take a couple of options of these materials to try different types.

What are the safe paint solvents for cleaning paint off your vehicle?

If you need to clean house paint, you will most likely think of solvents and thinners that are used to thin the house paint. But be careful. Your car paint job is very tender and will not keep its color and smoothness once you damage it with bad material. You should avoid anything that contains harmful spirits, acetone, and anything else that can destroy the paint on your vehicle.

Here are some products that may help:

A non-acetone nail polish remover. You may have it in your house or you may buy it in any cosmetics store or even in a supermarket. But check the contents – no acetone should be applied to the car paint job!
Rubbing alcohol. This is another product you may use for cleaning because it’s not that chemically active and still will work well with house paint. Rubbing alcohol is one of the best choices actually.
Different oil-based cleaners for paint. They are very safe but sometimes they are not efficient against cured paint. So, you may try them but never rely on them as the only solution.
Clay bars. They are really good at removing the invisible remains of house paint from your vehicle. They are affordable and are definitely worth buying when you need to clean something off the car body.
Polishing materials. When you polish your vehicle, you remove a tiny level of clear coat. It means that everything that covers that clearcoat will also be removed. So, we recommend a special high-abrasive polishing paste for dealing with these problems after they are visibly removed.

Now you know what you need to buy in a store or in a supermarket once you have this problem with paint drops on your car. Most likely, all of these products will help if you apply them in the correct form and sequence.

Be careful when choosing any products! If you overlook some harmful element in one of the liquids for removing paint, you can damage the car paint job and this will lead to repainting your vehicle or at least some part of it.

Cleaning the cured house paint off the vehicle

To clean the house paint that has already cured, you will need some materials that we’ve listed above. You may start with less harmful and see if they help.

ATTENTION! Better talk to a specialist before applying any aggressive materials to your car paint job. You may damage the clearcoat and this will lead to awful consequences and to the need of repainting the part of your car!

Here, we want to provide you with a small guide on how to clean the cured house paint off a car’s body:

Prepare the spot by cleaning it with water and letting it dry. This will ensure that the surface is clean from dust and particles that could scratch the paint.
After that, take a soft towel or rug and pour a little rubbing alcohol onto it. Be careful and don’t apply a lot of aggressive materials and spirits on the paint.
Rub the alcohol over the surface where you have those annoying paint spots and try cleaning them off. If it helps, pour more alcohol on the towel and keep rubbing it on the surface.
When you don’t see any house paint drops on the surface, stop rubbing the alcohol and start cleaning the spot to avoid any other problems. Never leave alcohol on the surface for too long.
For cleaning the spot, you may use any oil-based cleaner that doesn’t contain aggressive components.
After that, use water and soap to clean the spot. The best solution would be to wash all the vehicles to avoid accidental drops of alcohol on some other parts.
Before washing the vehicle, you may also use a clay bar to clean the surface. In most cases, this will help you avoid any tiny remains of house paint on the vehicle.
Also, we would recommend buffing up the surface in order to make it even more beautiful and to ensure that there are no problems with little remaining spots of house paint.

After polishing the vehicle, you will know that you’ve done everything you could. Still, seeing some annoying house paint drops? You have no choice but to go to a professional and ask for advice.

When should you repaint the vehicle?

Unfortunately, our method will work in those cases only if the house paint didn’t have a chance to affect the clear coat pretty much. If you don’t notice the problem within a day after it has occurred, you will probably fail to save the paint job. Even after a thorough cleaning, you will see colored spots in places where house paint got onto the car body.

Especially bad are these spots if the house paint color was different from a vehicle color. For example, grey house paint will certainly leave grey spots on your white car after you clean and even buff the vehicle.

In this case, the only thing you can do is to go to a car paint shop and ask for their help. Usually, they will wet-sand the whole affected body part and will repaint it using professional equipment. Doing this at home is impossible because you can’t get the needed paint color and you don’t have compressors and paint guns that are needed for this. Also, your garage has a lot of dust that will obviously stick to the paint making the paint job very poor.

Final words

It’s quite important that you should take care of the vehicle once you see that its paint job was affected by something. Repainting a car is expensive and it’s always bad for the residual value because painted cars are prone to rust and other problems.

If you locate house paint drops on your vehicle, the best thing is to visit a car paint shop for advice. Or you can follow our guidelines and get rid of the problem without spending a big amount of money.

Author
Recent Posts

paintsgeek

We are a team of enthusiasts in crafts and painting. That’s why we know pretty much about painting, paint types and all those problems you might face when working. We give only practical advice that you can follow to avoid any troubles with paint.