Removing Stains from Ceiling Tiles

The ceiling is one area of your home that you would think would be relatively free of stains, considering how high up it is. Who, after all, would throw food and beverages at the ceiling, for crying out loud? Sadly, however, ceiling tiles take as many stains as many other areas of the house, so here are some tips for removing them.

Among the many offending items that can cause stains on your ceiling tiles are water—omnipresent and just waiting to seep in through pipes, the roof, the walls—nicotine and cigarette smoke, cooking smoke, cobwebs, airborne dirt, and even bacteria. Since the solutions are more or less identical for all of these stains, we will discuss them in a little more detail.

Before you begin the process of removing stains from ceiling tiles, you must take steps to protect your furniture, fixtures, and floors with cloth, plastic, or newspaper. If you can manage to clean the ceiling tiles without getting on a ladder, do so. And if you are cleaning your ceiling tiles as part of an overall room-cleaning process, always clean the ceiling before starting on walls and floors.

Removing stains from ceiling tiles may not be such a bothersome affair if you can wield your vacuum cleaner's dust brush attachment effectively. A vacuum works especially well on stains that have not set in yet.

Alternatively, you can remove mild stains and dirt with detergent and water, but whenever you use water on ceiling tiles, make sure you dry them thoroughly afterward.

For cobwebs, you will need to use a vacuum cleaner. Vacuuming is essential because cobwebs tend to collect grease. Additionally, they gather airborne dust and smoke from cooking and cigarettes. In other words, cobwebs are truly greasy. Rubbing cobwebs with a cloth duster will only smear them and produce stains that are tougher to remove.

In the case of more stubborn stains, wear rubber or latex gloves and dip a scrubber in a solution of a half cup chlorine bleach and a third cup powdered washing detergent in a gallon of warm water. Standing on your stepladder, carefully scrub the affected areas. Once you are satisfied that the entire area has been covered, rinse the area, again using the scrubber. For large stains, you need to rinse until the rinse water comes back clean, possibly using several buckets of fresh water.

Once the rinsing is complete, make sure the area is completely dry (opening a few windows might do the trick) before you consider your stain-removing campaign complete.

It may be wise to try to figure out which stains you can and can't tackle. You may not be up to the task of removing certain stains from your ceiling tiles. In that case, always summon professional help.