Artex ceilings were everywhere in Liverpool homes built or decorated between the 1960s and 1990s, and plenty of owners now want that swirled or stippled finish gone. Before you reach for a scraper, there is one serious safety issue to rule out first, and a few different routes to a flat ceiling, some of which do not involve removal at all.
Textured coatings applied before the mid 1980s often contained white asbestos, and it was still turning up in some products into the early 1990s. Artex is only dangerous when it is disturbed, which is exactly what scraping, sanding or steaming does, so you must know what you are dealing with before any work starts.
Testing is cheap and straightforward. A UKAS accredited lab will analyse a sample for roughly 10 to 30 pounds, and postal kits are widely available. Take the sample carefully: wet the area first, wear an FFP3 mask and disposable gloves, remove a piece about the size of a 2p coin into a sealable bag, then wipe the area and seal the spot with PVA or paint. If your house was decorated after about 1995, asbestos is unlikely, but with anything older it is not worth guessing.
Full removal is not the only way to lose the texture, and often it is not the best one. The three realistic routes are scraping it off, steaming and scraping, or covering it over with plaster or plasterboard.
Skimming over is what we recommend most often, provided the artex is sound and well bonded. The ceiling is scraped back of any high peaks, sealed with a bonding agent such as PVA or a proprietary primer, then given two coats of finishing plaster. You get a flat, modern ceiling without disturbing the coating underneath, which is also the standard approach where artex has tested positive for asbestos, because encapsulation avoids disturbing it. For a typical Liverpool terrace living room of around 12 to 15 square metres, expect a professional skim to take a day, plus drying time before decorating.
If your artex has tested negative and you want it gone rather than covered, wet removal is the way. A wallpaper steamer softens the coating so it peels off with a stripping knife, and keeping it wet stops dust getting into the air. Work in sections of about half a metre at a time, hold the steam plate on for 20 to 30 seconds, and scrape at a shallow angle so you do not gouge the plasterboard behind.
Products like X-Tex, a purpose made artex remover, are an alternative to steam and are designed to keep the coating damp while it is scraped. Either way, sheet the whole room with polythene, wear goggles and an FFP3 mask as a precaution, and bag the waste as you go. A single ceiling is a full weekend job for most people, and the ceiling will almost always need a skim coat afterwards anyway, because scraping leaves scars and residue that paint will not hide.
Costs depend on ceiling size, access, the condition of the artex and whether asbestos is involved, so treat these as guide figures. A professional skim over artex on an average sized room in the Liverpool area typically runs from around 200 to 450 pounds. Full removal and reskim costs more because of the labour and waste involved. If asbestos is confirmed, factor in testing and either encapsulation or removal by someone with the right training, and disposal must go through a licensed route rather than household bins.
Call in a plasterer if the artex is flaking, the ceiling has cracks or water staining, or the coating fails a simple pull test with masking tape, because skimming over a loose surface will fail. Older properties around Merseyside often have lath and plaster ceilings under the artex, and these need assessing before any heavy scraping, as aggressive removal can bring sections of the ceiling down with it.