Ah, the humble lavatory. The place where we go to relieve ourselves, not only from the usual bodily needs, but from the stress of a long day. Our trusty friend and companion, the loo, is a wonderful refuge from our day-to-day life. That’s why we need to take care of it. Limescale is a devilish little thing that lurks in the water. It loves to grip onto our lovely white toilet bowl, which in time, leads to an unseemly discolouration of the porcelain. That’s why we’ve decided to put together a guide of the do’s and dont’s on how to remove limescale from your toilet.

What is Limescale?

First things first, before you tackle the beast, you need to know what it is. Limescale is a sneaky little thing. It’s a hard, chalky deposit, made up of mainly calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It often tends to build up in kettles, hot water boilers, and pipework, especially for hot water. Limescale builds up in places where “hard water” evaporates. After which, limescale usually turns a funny colour. The colours can vary from off-white through to a range of greys and pink or reddish browns. In addition to being hard to clean and not so pleasing to the eye, it can cause serious damage to plumbing and heating components.

How NOT to Remove Limescale

As always with cleaning methods, there are many cleaning myths out there. That’s why we have tried and tested those methods and we’re here to give you the results. Here are the two most popular limescale removal myths we’ve discovered:

1. Bleach – Common bleach is one of the best friends of the household. It can remove tough stains, brighten darkened surfaces, disinfect, and it kills basically everything. So it would be understandable as to why so many people think it works. The truth is that it doesn’t actually remove the limescale. It just brightens the discolouration. In this case, it makes the limescale more destructive, as you can’t see it and aren’t aware of the damage it’s doing.
2. Coca-Cola – According to this myth, pouring a bottle of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl and leaving overnight will destroy the limescale. The idea is that the acid in the cola will get rid of the limescale. Our results on this test weren’t great. All we got was a cola-coloured limescale stain.

How to Remove Limescale From Your Toilet?

Ok, so now we’ve cleared up those little myths, we’ll tell you a few DIY ways of de-scaling your toilet. You will need:

• White vinegar
• Sandpaper

That’s it! Here are our two methods from limescale removal:

How to Remove Limescale with Vinegar:

1. Get 1 litre of undiluted white vinegar and pour it into the bowl. Make sure you get all sides of the toilet bowl.
2. Now, it’s waiting time. Give it at least 3 hours to sit.
3. Using a toilet brush or a scrubbing sponge with more white vinegar, scrub ot the toilet bowl.
4. Flush to remove all residue.
5. Repeat until your toilet is sparkling like new!

How to Remove Limescale with Sandpaper:

We recommend using 2 types of sandpaper for this job – medium-grain and fine-grain

1. Scrub the inside of the toilet starting with the medium-grain sandpaper.
2. Carry on until the majority of the limescale is gone and don’t apply to much pressure so as not to scratch the bowl.
3. Using the fine-grain start to buff the inside of the toilet until the stain is completely gone.
4. Flush the loo to get rid of any residue and clean the toilet as you usually would.

Need professional cleaning help? Check out our one-off cleaning service!