How to Remove Candle Wax from your walls, carpets, and warmers

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I am sure you can all agree….candles are a joyful part of the home’s decorations and scent. BUT what happens when its ~~accidentally~~ knocked over by a small child or a large dog?

I am convinced that wiping it up immediately is sacrilegious or something. Because no one ever tells Mom when it happens. They get the closest older sibling and hope that child can figure out how to best cover it up.

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For example, a Scentsy plug-in was recently elbowed by a small person. Instead of getting me to help, my middle child decided that she would just turn it off and tell on the culprit when I finally noticed it (several days later). Another situation, dog gets pushed into another Scentsy plug-in and the OLDEST child merely unplugs it and moves it to a different outlet. 🤦‍♀️

Well, I have to determine the best way to remove the wax the walls and carpet. The wax is already dry so I cannot just wipe it up and hope there isn’t a lot of residue….it’s too late for that option.

I think we will do this MythBuster’s style 🧪 . I will read an anecdote, try it out, and give you proof (or lack thereof) in pictures.

Hair dryer

The idea for this method came from Cleanipedia.

And a million other places…..but the idea is that you reheat the wax, slowly with a hair dryer, and wipe it up with a paper towel. You know, like you would have done if you had known when it happened.

My sand dollar plug-in just to the left of the hand towel in the half bath. It was quite a splash!

Hair dryer & paper towel to catch the drip and wipe up the melted wax. Picture courtesy of middle child Noelle, she is really an ARTIST, she told me to move my hand a certain way etc.

Clean wall. I took it from a lower angle, so you could see there isn’t much residue left over.

Ironing

This method came from This Old House.

Apparently placing a towel over the wax-laden area and running the iron over it will make the wax adhere to the towel….however, I guess we should use a paper towel because if it were a cloth towel, we’d be back to square one…right??!?!!

I have no idea how none of this got on the wall. I’m going to assume that oldest child had enough sense to wipe the wall off.

It was working! By the way, if you’ve never owed a Rowenta iron….you should. It is so worth the money. This is our second one. First one we had for 13 years or something like that.

All the wax was removed. And there were some pretty big spots. I’m really impressed.

Scraping

This scraping idea comes from Healthy Home Cleaning.

She says we should use a stoneware scraper to remove the wax. Well, I don’t have a Pampered Chef one, but I have one for the Lodge Cast Iron stuff we have, this exact kit in fact.

This is the floor of the half bath….elbow met little kid and giant wax splash….you can see it all over the floor and the base board.

So I got scraping. It was really easy and I didn’t have to worry about harming the floor with a knife….as I have done in the past.

Viola, I threw away the pile and realized that there was still some spots I couldn’t scrape.

Since the hair dryer did so great on the wall, I decided I would use it to get the rest of the wax off the floor. It worked so well, it even got up a small spot from a previous spill!

Dissolving

Today.com says that we can remove candle wax from fabrics, such as clothing and walls by rubbing with nail polish remover or rubbing alcohol. I used all my nail polish remover during our spa day at the Beach House a few weeks ago and have not replaced it yet. SO – I will use rubbing alcohol.

This was a small spill but I needed it for an example.

Rubbing alcohol does not work very well on the walls. It started to take the paint off….but it might work on clothing. I don’t plan on trying that out (because I don’t plan on anyone getting it on their clothing!!!!)

Cotton Balls

I think the best part about candles and Scentsy is that we can change the entire mood with a change in the wax smell in our home. So what do you do when you are tired of the current smell?

Removing Scentsy wax from a Scentsy warmer is actually easy….wish I had known this a long time ago….but that’s ok. While the wax is still hot (warm) and the warmer is still on, place a handful of cotton balls in the warming plate.

One of my favorite warmers….It illuminates the room soooo nicely.

Cotton balls. They soak up the wax quickly. I use more than I need to because I don’t want to get burned by the wax; figure it’s $2 for 1000 cotton balls, but a burn could cost $1,000’s.

I can’t figure out why it doesn’t get old wax out?

Overall, I would say that all these myths have some level of truth to them.

Some of them MUST be used as part of a step-by-step process.

The only fail (and maybe it’s different for clothing) was the rubbing alcohol. It started to strip the paint, and even some of those reference sites recommended using rubbing alcohol to clean off the residue – I don’t recommend that.

Scraping worked but it could not get all the pieces up. However, I imagine using ONLY the hair dryer on those larger puddles would take time. SO good combo for the floors for sure! Nonetheless, I cleaned up 3 messes I’ve been putting off for a LONG time…now I know – it’s actually easy!

My MythBuster’s episode is complete! I hope it helps you. Even if you just try one…..that means you are cleaning up a mess…just sayin’.

Happy Clean Up,