You love your kids’ artistic streaks but not if it means you need to remove crayon marks from walls.
Unfortunately for me, my twin daughters went on a giant wall coloring binge with crayons. To make it even better than used an ugly brown and black crayon they snuck upstairs to their bedroom, instead of nice light yellow or cream color.
In the past I have successfully removed crayon from walls using a Magic Eraser. And they work, but I found the process tedious, and it often removes the paint as well as the crayon markings, dripping white paint down my arm and onto my clothes and carpeted floor.
No thank you!
I prefered to find a way how to remove crayon from walls without removing paint.
Plus, this wasn’t like a small square foot area; this was top to bottom crayon markings on every wall in their bedroom. I knew this was a project that would take me hours to successfully do. Magic Erasers aren’t inexpensive, even generic ones, and I would need several to tackle this job.
That’s why I postponed getting rid of the crayon markings from the walls…. for a year. I wanted a quick, cheap, possibly green (what are in those Magic Erasers
So I searched the internet for ideas on different ways to remove crayon from walls. I found numerous suggested ways. I figured why not do an experiment testing out these various ways to get crayon off walls. Could be fun, right?
How to Remove Crayon from Walls – Products that don’t work
To save you all some time, I am going to start with the things that did not work.
Basic H2 Degreaser
I found a pin that said that I could use Shaklee® Basic-H2® 
I happen to have this product, as we were gifted a full set of Get Clean products four years ago. However, it didn’t work. In fact, I’m not impressed by anything in their product line. In the picture you can see a little smudging of the crayon. That’s all the degreaser did. Fail.
Dryer Sheet (Dry or Wet)
Rubbing a dry dryer sheet to remove crayon from a wall did absolutely nothing. Dipping the dryer sheet into water and then scrubbing the wall with it did only a little something, but a wet dryer sheet is like the hardest cloth to scrub with ever. Don’t bother trying to clean crayon from walls with dryer sheets. Plus, dryer sheets aren’t cheap or chemical free.
Toothpaste
While toothpaste smells minty fresh, it’s pretty gross to use as a cleaning agent. And despite what the pin said, toothpaste didn’t get crayon marks off walls. At least it didn’t at all for me. 
Vinegar
The directions I found for using vinegar to clean crayon marks from walls said to clean the walls with vinegar and a toothbrush. So I did.
If I thought other ways to get crayon off walls were tedious, this one took the cake. And it didn’t work very well. Despite vinegar’s awesome cleaning abilities in other areas of the home, crayon removal apparently isn’t one of its strong suits.
How to Remove Crayon from Walls – Products the Work!
Blow Dryer
I found that using a blow dryer, which heats up the crayon wax on the wall, allowed me to easily remove crayon from walls with a simple wet and soapy washcloth. I heated up the crayon on the walls, scrubbed them with the washcloth, and off the marks came! However, my hand got tired of holding the hairdryer and the room started to heat up quite a bit. Whew!
Dish soap and Water
I was very surprised that getting a good textured washcloth and a bucket full of dish soap and hot water would also get crayon off walls!
You had to scrub hard, of course, but it worked. I used this in conjunction with the blow dryer and it worked well. However, scrubbing hard does remove some of the white paint from the walls. Soapy water helped cleanup after several of the following cleaning methods as well. 
Goo Gone
I was honestly very surprised that Goo Gone
Glass Cleaner or Ammonia
I used some Kroger brand glass cleaner (which is ammonia-based) and sprayed some onto the wall and scrubbed with a cloth. Glass cleaner will get crayon off walls! I found that if you let it sit for a little bit it was a little easier to remove.
WD-40
This tip worked about as well as the Goo Gone
Baking Soda and Water Paste
While vinegar might not have worked, the other awesome household cleaner, baking soda, did. To remove crayon from walls with baking soda, make a paste with baking soda and water. A 50/50 mixture is great. Grab a rag, or sponge, and scrub the paste onto the wall to get crayon marks off. The only downside of using baking soda to get crayon off walls is that your walls will be left with a gritty baking soda residue, that will ultimately, have to be cleaned off with that bowl of soapy water again.
Mr. Clean Magic Erasers
I know it’s not my favorite, but Magic Erasers
If you want to avoid having to clean crayon off your walls again, thanks to your little Picassos, via any of the above methods, then I suggest you throw away all regular crayons and ONLY buy WASHABLE Crayons
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Also, be sure to check out my other cleaning posts!:
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Interesting. I recently looked online to try and find a green alternative to goo gone, since I know it’s pretty toxic, and someone said that coconut oil mixed with baking soda worked. I tried it and sure enough – worked like a charm! I was trying to remove sticky residue from a label, not crayon from a wall, but if the goo gone works on the crayon, and the baking soda works on the crayon, my guess would be that the baking soda/oil paste would probably work well. And much greener and less toxic/stinky/nasty than goo gone, or wd-40 for that matter. In fact, it might even work on your drip pans. I think I will try that in fact! I really hope it does work, because I hate cleaning those things. And if it does work well, on either of those things, it is totally worth it to me to go over them with soapy water to remove the oil/soda afterward, because that doesn’t require any scrubbing.
I remember as a kid always having to use toothpaste and an old toothbrush after writing on the walls. Maybe it works better with pen than with crayon(?). Thanks for the experiment!
I used to use toothpaste all the time, but maybe it’s different now. I also use an orange cleaner for all that kind of stuff now. Takes oil out of carpets etc and it’s a natural product. Save on everything. I used it to take gluey residue off the outside of a vehicle and it worked like a charm, never had a problem after than.
My daughter a few years ago used permanent marker for something and it bled through onto the table. We used hand sanitizer for that and I was surprised how well it worked.
Oh my! I would let those kiddos help out with this job so that they can see exactly why you are not supposed to color on the walls. I always use Magic Eraser, but I don’t wet it. Just rub it dry on the crayon marks and it comes right off!
I used baking paper a damp t cloth and an iron .
Put the baking paper over the crayon then the damp t cloth you then iron over the t cloth and the wax crayon transfers on to the baking paper an just peels off 🙂
Great tip Kat! I’ll have to try that next time!
I have a 2 year old and a 3 year old. They got the awesome idea to color on EVERY wall. Not kidding. Every wall. I googled how to clean crayon off walls and found the tooth paste trick. So I grabbed my tooth paste with bbaking soda and peroxide and my handy hard bristle scrub brush and started scrubbing. It worked really well. Sometimes I had to let it sit for a about a minute. But it definitely works. And my house smelt amazing compared to harsh cleaners. 🙂
Thanks for this! I have two girls who also used the ugly black and brown crayons, only on three living room walls 🙁
I’ve experienced the drippy paint magic erasers as well, and didn’t want to go that route, so I tried several (6?, 7?) of these methods. Goo Gone worked by far the best for me, until I couldn’t stand the smell any more. I tried the DRY magic eraser method that someone commented above and it worked as well as the Goo Gone, if not better! I went through a lot of them, but sometimes easy beats cheap 🙂
Oh! So glad this helped! Yeah, the smell of the Goo-Goo does get really intense! Glad you figured out what worked best for you.
I do not have a clever cleaning tip, however I do admit that I let my son color on his walls because it’s a form of artistic expression and hey he’s a kid he should be able to do things that kids do and not get in trouble, anyways I have found that chalk is extremely easy to remove from walls so I have gotten rid of all the crayons and replaced them with chalk, Cut the cleaning time down by more than half
Ha. That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing! Did you paint walls with chalkboard pant or something?
This list is the ultimate for getting crayons off walls. I guess we have your daughters to thank for expanding their art work beyond the paper, lol!
Ha! I guess that’s so. Kids provide some of the greatest blog prompts, huh?
I AM SOOOOO THANKFUL I FOUND THIS POST!!! My daughter was drawing on her wall when she was 1 yr. She is now 3, and thanks to you there is no more crayon on her wall!!!! Windex was quick and easy!! Weill never forget this little trick!
Woo hooo! Yeah! Windex for the win!
Years ago when I lived in base housing, I frantically asked at the hardware store what to do about the crayon marks my daughter made on the wall and fridge. What I was told worked perfectly: Formula 409. It wiped right off. The other hint was to use orange extract on crayon that is melted into clothes after they’ve accidentally made it through the dryer.
We were able to get crayon off of our textured walls with white paint with Lysol wipes(lemon scented), they worked quite well.
Great experiment! I got some good knowledge on erasing crayons, form your post and definitely trying few of your ideas. Thanks, it’s good to find such helpful information form someone’s personal experience. Greets!
Mayo!! It sounds stupid I know but it works. It does work better on flat walls then 70s texture walls but then I did wd40 and it got in the nooks and crannies. I can’t stand the feeling of magic erasers so it was a good alternative!!!
Wow these methods of getting crayon off the wall are a lot of work. A regular eraser works AMAZINGLY and quick.
Baking Soda and Water Paste worked great on my latex paint, eggshell finish walls in my new rental apartment. So glad you tested all these methods, thank you!