How do you remove hair wax?
Soak a clean washcloth in hot water. Be careful not to make it too hot because your skin is probably already a bit irritated from the hair removal process. Place the hot, wet cloth on the wax residue and let it sit for a minute. This should soften the wax enough for you to be able to wipe it off with the washcloth.
Body wax is excellent for removing unwanted hair from skin, but it’s not meant to end up anywhere else. It cools quickly and hardens, making it difficult to clean away completely. Simply scraping it off of a hard surface can damage a delicate finish and leave residue behind, and the longer wax cools and rests, the more damaging it can be. So, if you spill body wax on a hard surface, it needs to be removed quickly, but do you know the best way to do it?
Step 1 – Wipe up Hot Wax
To begin, use paper towels to wipe up as much of the hot wax as possible. This will make further clean-up easier. Discard the soiled paper towels in the garbage when you’ve finished. Where you proceed from here will depend on how hard the body wax is, which in turn depends on how long it is left to cool
Step 2 – Heat Solid Wax
If the body wax has been sitting long enough to solidify then you should use heat to soften it. To do this, cover the spill with an old towel and switch a hair dryer on high. Aim the hot air directly at the towel so it heats the wax underneath. As it heats up, wipe away the softened material with the towel to expose any unheated wax remaining. Keep doing this until you’ve worked down through the entire wax spill. Most of the substance should be taken care of at this point, but it’s highly likely there will still be residue left behind. Don’t worry; this will be taken care of in a later step.
Step 3 – Freeze the Wax
If the wax hasn’t completely solidified, you may achieve better results if you use ice to harden it. This will make the splotches of wax brittle and easy to chip away at.
Cover the mess with a clean towel and pile ice on top. Leave it for 15 minutes to allow the material to harden completely. Then, take a metal spatula, work it under the hard edge of the body wax, and lift to pull it away from the surface in pieces. Keep going to remove as much of the wax as possible.
With any particularly thick globs, you might find that the wax hasn’t solidified properly in some areas. Do not try to get these up with the spatula yet. Stop, cover them with a towel, and put ice on the area for another 15 minutes before you try to work the wax free.
Step 4 – Clean up the Residue
Having removed the bulk of the body wax, you’ll still be left with a residue on the hard surface that can become a bad stain. To take care of this, take a bottle of baby oil and put some a paper towels to wipe over the wax on the surface. You’ll need to keep doing this for several minutes with a few different paper towels covered in oil to remove all of the body wax residue. Afterward, wipe away any oil with a clean paper towel and go over the area with a rag soaked in warm water and soap. Follow up by drying the area with a clean cloth and you’ll be finished.
