How to Clean Permanent Marker From Whiteboards

Permanent markers and whiteboard markers can be all too easy to mix up. If you’ve accidentally written on a whiteboard with a permanent marker, you can try these steps to control the damage.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paper towels
• Glass cleaner
• Mild solvent-based cleaner
• WD-40

1. If you can start cleaning the whiteboard within a couple of minutes, you have a great chance of cleaning it completely. Give the permanent marker stain a few sprays with the glass cleaner and wipe it immediately with a paper towel. This may smear the marker around a bit, and if you let it set, it may stain that way. Keep spraying and wiping with fresh paper towels to get all of it up when it’s still fresh.

2. If it sets in for longer than a couple of minutes, try using a solvent-based cleaner and paper towels instead. This will almost always lighten the stain significantly, if not remove it entirely.

3. If you can still see some staining, try rubbing it hard with a little WD-40 and a paper towel. When you’re done, wipe the area clean with a damp paper towel.

4. Faint stains may continue to fade away over time with continued use of erasable markers and whiteboard erasers, so don’t necessarily give up on your whiteboard if you can’t get it completely clean.

Tips & Warnings

• To help prevent this from happening in the first place, make a point of always keeping erasable markers in the immediate vicinity of your whiteboard.
• Consider keeping a bottle of glass cleaner and paper towels right next to the whiteboard just in case.
• Always observe the safety instructions of WD-40 and all cleaning products.