Remove Highlighter Marks With A Lemon

The highlighter is one of the stationery items we often use in our daily lives. But there will be times when we slip up and want to erase the area to start again. However, you certainly don't want to cause damage to your paper when erasing ink marks. So, did you know that using lemon juice to remove highlighters from textbooks is the most effective and popular method?

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How carefully you use highlight markers, you can make mistakes. And want to erase that area for a fresh start. 

But while erasing highlighter ink from any document, you may not love that your paper is damaging. So, before starting the erasing process, you must know that from which type of paper you are trying to erase. And how the method will affect the paper.

In our day-to-day life, we mainly use two types of paper – glossy and matte. From these two, you’ll be able to remove highlighter stains easily from glossy paper, generally used on high-quality books or magazines.

But in terms of matte paper, you must need to be careful. You’ll find some cheap matte paper that starts to tear up or erase the original text ink. Whatever method you choose, it’s always recommended to test it on a small area first.

So, you can try out the simple tips given below to get off highlighter stain and make your book looks new. Don’t make a hurry! Remember that not all types of highlighter marks can be removed from paper.

Things You’ll Need

·         Lemon Juice

·         Cotton Swab

·         Bottle Cap/Small Bowl

·         Paper Towel/Soft Cloth

·         Nail Polish Remover

·         Rubbing Alcohol

·         Soft Bristled Toothbrush

·         Baking Soda

·         Warm Water

·         Kitchen Knife

Among all the ingredients that are used to produce highlighter pens, Pyranine is the most important one. Because this ingredient decides the color of the highlighter. But Pyranine is PH sensitive.

On the other hand, lemon is a natural fruit with acidic juice, making it an excellent home remedy for removing stains. It acts as natural bleach when used on stains.

So, when you use acidic lemon juice on the PH-sensitive ingredient, it’ll start to become fade and eventually colorless. That’s why you can also use this household item to get highlighter out of clothes.

You can use lemon to remove highlighter ink from paper in the following steps:

First Step

The first step is to get a lemon and cut it half or quarter using a kitchen knife. Don’t make the mistake of directly putting the lemon juice on the highlighted text just by squeezing it.

The reason is that lemon holds a lot of juice, and when you put it directly on the ink, the paper will get wrinkled. And there is also a chance of spreading the ink everywhere.

So, first, squeeze the lemon on a small bowl or bottle cap, whatever you find near your hands to collect the juice.

Second Step

Now take a cotton swab and pour one side of it in the juice. When it absorbs enough liquid, you have to rub it over the highlighted text to erase the ink.

Before that, you have to test it in other areas to check whether it does any damage to the paper or not. Because you must need to keep the paper and typed ink as before and just need to erase highlighter ink.

So, test the cotton swab on outside of the left margin close to the binding. Because in that area people usually don’t look as they notice mainly on the right side margin of a book.

However, if you see that it’s working without damaging the paper, you have to start the main process.

Third Step

In this step, place a hard paper beneath the area you want to use lemon juice. It’ll keep safe the other pages from wetting out.

Now, gently start rubbing over the original highlighted area. While rubbing, you’ll see that the lemon has started to work, and highlighted ink is fading away.

After rubbing twice or thrice times, you’ll notice that all the highlighted ink has become vanished. It works magically like a bleach-based ink eraser.

Remember not to rub more than thrice as it can make the paper wrinkled more or even tear. Even while rubbing for the first time, the cheap paper begins to wrinkle.

Final Step

After erasing all the ink, use a paper towel to soak extra residue of lemon juice. But it’s not the end. If you notice that you’ve got a wrinkle in your paper, then you have to resolve it.

For this, put printer paper over the wrinkle area. Then carefully iron on it few times with a low setting. And Yes! You’ve got your book as before. But this step is not necessary if there are no wrinkles on pages.