Out Damned Spot! Out I Say! Permant Marker + White Board= Seeing Red

Have you ever had one of those days you wish you stayed in bed? I had one a couple of weeks ago when I struggled (aka screamed, threw a fit or two and ran) to get to the train on time only to find out it was delayed (so the rush was pointless), then I got into work to see my coworker had used his recently purchased permanent markers to write on not one but two white boards. I literally said to him "my 6 year old even know the difference between a permanent marker and a whiteboard marker!" The funniest part was some of the details were his personal lists and not work related. Made me chuckle a little bit. But the deed was done, so I had to figure out how to get it off.

I received a great tip from Amy on a previous post (where I ripped up a white board because my kids drew on it when they were little) on how to take the permanent marker off with Murphy's Oil Soap.  So I thought I would test it out with a few other methods to see how they compare.

So this is what challenge I faced. Not only was it permanent marker, it was red permanent marker! I found this to be the hardest of any color to remove; but I did.

The methods to remove permanent marker from white board I tested:

• Murphy's Oil Soap
• Magic Eraser
• White Board Marker (I will explain below)
• Combination Murphy's oil soap and magic eraser

Murphy's Oil Soap (Undiluted)

I dampened a microfiber cloth with Murphy's Oil soap and scrubbed away. It worked really well and only took bit of scrubbing to get it all off. You will need lots of cloths because the permanent marker almost seems to be an oil that sits on the cloth. I did end up with bright red stained fingers from this method.

Magic Eraser

I dampened the Magic Eraser with water and scrubbed the permanent marker. It seems to smear the permanent marker across the white board; again it felt like the permanent marker had oil in it. Do you see the shading of the word below?

It eventually took everything off with more scrubbing, so it definitely is an option if you face this same problem.

White Board Marker

Monstermoma recommended scribbling over the entire area of permanent marker with white board marker! You read that right...cover the permanent with white board marker. Guess what, it works. It is not the best solution out of all of them, but it will work if you have no other choice.

So here is what it looked like. The permanent marker is the red and the green is the white board marker. I found the permanent marker almost transferred to the white board marker so be careful not to ruin your white board markers with this method.

Use the white board eraser brush to clean the area and here was what you have.

Not completely gone, but after a few more tries it was.

I did find it did not clean the board to it original state. It left little lines of permanent marker in grooves on the board. You can kind of see it in this photo at the bottom left.

Combination Method - Murphy's Oil Soap and Magic Eraser

I found this to be the best solution to remove the permanent marker. Dampen your magic eraser with Murphy's oil soap and scrub away. It easily removed the permanent marker and the oily film that I struggled with with both of the individual methods.

Ranking of methods to get permanent marker off a white board:

1. Combination of Murphy's oil soap and magic eraser
2. Murphy's oil soap
3. Magic eraser
4. White Board Marker technique

So here are some full after shots. I would show you the before images where these boards are completely covered with red permanent marker, but I don't think we need to know my coworkers to do list since we all have long ones ourselves.

Two sparkling clean white boards!

Not bad if I do say so myself.

I hope this helps some of you out there; I wish I knew about it when my two kids were really young.

Up next in "Out Damned Spot! Out I Say"....colored candle wax in cream carpet! 

Do you have any tips or tricks of your own?
Stephanie