what's the best way of making hall/stair walls appear scuff free

[mrsshackleton]

DH in his naivety insisted on all walls in halls/stairs being painted white when we redecorated about four years ago. Fast forward, of course they are hideously scuffed by dc. If we redecorated in a greyish tone would the scuffs be less obvious? Or do we just put up with scuffed walls and frequent redecorating until dc go to university?

Whatever colour I decorate in I always seem to get a bit of this! I always keep some extra of the paint and touch up every so often.

In the old days (ten years ago!) I used to find that I could wipe my walls or use a stain eraser to get rid of scuffs. Not so now - the paint (and it's Dulux or Crown in my case) just seems to come off. I think the formulations have become 'safer'. A friend has recommended the kid's version to me as this is supposed to be wipeable as are kitchen and bathroom. However, he also thought that you then can;t put matt on top of this. Maybe drop a line to Dulux or Crown to find out more? I mailed them a few years ago about something and they got back very quickly.

I bought Little Greene's durable matt paint (the ultimatt or intelligent stuff) - you can scrub marks off. The white intelligent emulsion has done really well - the acrylic intelligent eggshell is utter crap and just scrapes right off. I'm in the process of going over it all with the oil-based version. I'm tied to their colours now, but would go for a dulux satinwood for woodwork if I had to do it over. I doubt the colour is going to make much difference unless you go very dark - you just have to clean the walls and touch up every now and again.

Paints are all water based now, much safer but crap. Car paint is also more water based now.

I'm at uni myself and we had to clean our house before we moved out at the end of the year. The walls were covered in scuff marks from moving furniture and greasy sticky stains, we weren't allowed to touch up the paint and were told to use something called sugar soap from B and Q and it was great. It doesn't take any of the paint off but really gets everything else off well.
It was only a couple of pounds I think so worth a try.

Sugar soap didn't do the trick for me, neither did cream cleaner (as suggested by our landlord). Have to admit that I went against our landlord's rules and repainted in a similar colour to what was already there. Looks much better, even if it was naughty

Thanks, everyone. Hearing this, my cunning plan is to pay a pittance something to 8 yo dd who is already on holiday to clean walls. I think she'll quite enjoy it, she's much tidier than me by nature