How to Remove Stains from Plastic Palettes

My very first palette and many subsequent palettes after have all been plastic folding palettes. I own a lot of plastic palettes. You can see three different palettes I’ve used here, here, and here. 

When using plastic palettes, there is one thing that inevitably happens over time: staining.

I’m not sure there is a plastic palette that exists out there that resists staining. I suppose if you painted with a more subdued palette and avoided staining pigments, you may not have experienced this. But more likely than not, if you’ve used a plastic palette, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Staining doesn’t bother me very much since the “ghosting” is not too distracting for me.  For this reason, I’ve never tried to remove the stains -other than just washing my palette with water.  But this topic came up inside my membership community, Paint With Me, and prompted me to do some research to see if staining could be removed.

Based on some googling and YouTube video searching, it appears that there are two effective ways to remove stains from plastic palettes:

Use a Plastic Eraser

Erase the stains, literally. I haven’t yet tried this myself, but you can use a polymer eraser to erase your stains. According to this video by Eve Bolt, it may or may not cause the palette to bead after using this method.

Use a Magic Eraser

This is not an eraser but a melamine foam sponge. You can see how well it works to remove stains on plastic palettes in this video by Teo Yi Chie. In the video, he tries the sponge on a metal watercolor palette and notices it has dulled the glossy finish. This is because the melamine foam is actually an abrasive surface - something to be aware of before diving it and essentially “scratching” up your surface. Unless that is what you want to do!

Another Option: Olive Oil

If you are looking for an additional gentle and ‘natural’ way to remove stains, I received a recommendation from Jane Matsumoto (@ginkgoarts) to try olive oil.

I decided to give this a try and filmed the results (see video below).

The results? It worked! But as you might imagine, olive oil is non-abrasive and is not a chemical. So it is not going to work quite a effectively as a harsh cleaner, for example. However, it did work on some staining that a typical rinse + wipe with a towel would not remove.

Another note here is that these stains were pretty old. I wonder if they were “fresher” stains, if the olive oil would be more effective. All in all, I think it’s a pretty good option. Especially since olive oil (and other cooking oils) are likely to be immediately available in our homes.

The only thing to remember: remember to wash the oil off, of course! I just used a little bit of soap and water.

Thank you so much for reading,
Susan