If you’re a smoker, you’re probably already aware of the fact that quitting can change your life in many ways. You’ll feel better, you’ll smell better, and you’ll save a lot of money. Quitting also has several secondary benefits – and one of the biggest benefits has to do with what’s most likely the largest monetary investment you’ll ever make.
We’re talking, of course, about your home. Of the £1.5 million or so that you’ll spend during your lifetime, you’ll spend more of that money on buying your home(s) than on any other expense.
If you smoke in your home, you’re actively reducing the value of that investment – and the loss of value is significant. According to a survey of realtors, a home’s expected sale price will be decreased by as much as 29 percent if the home smells like smoke. Considering that the average home value in the UK is about £284,000, smoking in your home could reduce its value by more than £80,000.
Smoking in your car, by the way, is just as bad; it’ll reduce your vehicle’s resale value by about £2,000.
Of course, you’re most likely already aware of the effect of smoking on your home’s value. That’s why you’re interested in making the switch to vaping. Before you do that, though, you want to know whether vaping has the same drawback.
Remediating your home after you quit smoking is going to cost a lot of money if you hire professionals, or it’s going to be an enormous amount of work if you do it yourself. Before you do the work, you want to know if it’ll actually be worthwhile.
So, does vaping stain walls like smoking does? Let’s explore the answer to that question.
Does Vaping Leave Residue on Walls?
Vaping can leave residue on your walls. When you vape, you’re inhaling the vapour of a boiling liquid. The vapour has to condense somewhere, and some of it will probably condense on your walls. However, it isn’t the major problem that smoking in your home can be for three reasons.
- E-cigarette vapour dissipates much more quickly than cigarette smoke, so much of it will condense before it has a chance to reach your walls.
- Vaping is extremely unlikely to make your home smell because vaping doesn’t have the strong characteristic odour of smoking. Even if someone could smell the fact that you’re vaping, your home wouldn’t smell like smoke – it would smell like e-liquid.
- Propylene glycol, vegetable glycerine and nicotine – the three primary ingredients in e-liquid – are all completely water soluble. So, even if you do need to remove vapour residue from your walls, it’ll be very easy.
How to Prevent Vaping from Staining Your Walls
If you do vape in your home, it’s very easy to prevent or minimise any staining. We suggest doing these two things.
- Don’t vape in a small, enclosed area. If you vape in a large room, the majority of the vapour will condense on the floor before reaching the walls. You’ll remove most of the residue when you clean the floor, which is something you do anyway — especially if you have pets.
- Always vape with the windows open. The airflow will encourage the residue to dissipate more quickly.
Does Vaping Make Your Home Smell?
As we mentioned above, no one is likely to ever smell the fact that you vape in your home except when you’re actually vaping, and the vapour is still hovering in the air. Even in that case, the vapour won’t smell like cigarette smoke – it’ll smell like vanilla or blue raspberry or whatever e-liquid you happen to be vaping at the time. Most people aren’t going to complain about that. When the vapour dissipates, the smell will be gone.
The only possible exception is if you’re vaping heavily in a small room with no airflow. In this case, the room might acquire a light odour. As we mentioned above, though, the ingredients in e-liquid are water soluble – removing any residue from your walls isn’t a major project like removing stale cigarette smoke. We’ll discuss that in the next section.
Did you know that some e-liquids are unflavoured? Nicotine actually has a mild flavour of its own – most people find that it tastes a little like black pepper – and some people find that an e-liquid with a high level of nicotine and no other added flavourings can taste more like a cigarette than a tobacco-flavoured vape juice. If you’re concerned that vaping can potentially make your home smell, use an unflavoured e-liquid; it’ll have no scent. Plain menthol e-liquids also have no characteristic odours.
How to Remove Vape Residue from Your Walls
If vape residue collects on your walls, you’ll notice it in one of two ways.
- When you enter the room after not vaping for a while, you might notice that the room smells a bit like vape juice.
- If you look at the walls very closely, you might see tiny droplets of condensed e-liquid that you can rub away with your finger. E-liquid doesn’t evaporate in the way that water does, so any droplets of vape juice that you find on your walls won’t go away until you remove them yourself.
To remove the residue from your walls, you can use a rag with some warm water and a little mild detergent. The residue will come off immediately. If the room still smells like e-cigarette vapour, you can remove the smell by following these steps.
- Clean the ceiling with the same method that you used to clean your walls.
- If you have a hard floor, mop it. If you have a carpet, you can consider renting a carpet cleaner from your local supermarket. If you already vacuum the floor regularly, though, this is probably unnecessary unless you were planning a more thorough carpet cleaning anyway.
- If you have curtains, take them down and wash them. You can use your regular laundry detergent for this unless the curtains require special handling.
Once you’ve done all of these things, it should be impossible for anyone to tell that you’ve ever vaped in that room.