For paint applied after about 1972, a water-based non-caustic stripper does the job, and Home Strip at £25.49 for 2 litres is the sensible indoor choice. For older oil-based and lead paint buried under decades of repainting, only a caustic poultice like Peel Away 1 shifts it in one go. If your last attempt left you scraping at gummy paint for an afternoon, the reason is probably not the product you picked. It is the 2011 law that changed what any of them are allowed to contain.
We have not tested these products ourselves. This comparison is built from manufacturer data sheets, UK retailer listings, HSE guidance, and published third-party testing, all linked throughout.
Why paint stripper stopped working in 2011
The active ingredient that made old paint strippers work was banned for consumer use across the UK and EU. Regulation EU 276/2010 amended Annex XVII of REACH to restrict dichloromethane, also called methylene chloride, in paint strippers at concentrations of 0.1% or more. Supply to the general public stopped from December 2010, and use by professionals was restricted from June 2012. The UK later kept a narrow professional route open through the REACH Enforcement (Amendment) Regulations 2014, which require training and an HSE certificate of competence. Nothing in that route is available to a homeowner.
The scale of the change is easiest to see in Nitromors, since both formulas are documented. A safety data sheet from 2000 lists methylene chloride at 80 to 90% with methanol making up most of the rest. Current Nitromors is built on benzyl alcohol with a small amount of formic acid, per the manufacturer’s data sheets. Those are not variations on a theme. They are different chemistries doing the same job at very different speeds.
Two things follow from this. Benzyl alcohol formulas need dwell time measured in hours rather than minutes, and every complaint about a modern stripper being weaker than the one your dad used is accurate. It is also why “non-methylene chloride” printed on a tin is not a selling point. It is the law, and every product on the shelf next to it complies with the same rule.
Check the age of the paint first
Paint applied before roughly 1972 needs different chemistry from paint applied after it. Peel Away splits its own product range on exactly that line, and the manufacturer’s guidance is blunt about why: Peel Away 1 is a caustic poultice made for the risk-free removal of old oil-based and lead-based coatings typically found in areas painted before 1972, while Peel Away 7 is a pH-neutral water-based paste intended for modern paints and varnishes applied after it.
A poultice works differently from a gel or a liquid. You trowel the paste on thick, cover it with a blanket so it cannot dry out, and leave it for hours or overnight. The blanket is doing real work, not packaging. Peel Away rate their system at up to 32 coats in a single application, which is the sort of number that only means anything on a Victorian front door where the paint has become part of the architecture.
The trap most people fall into is reaching for the strongest option on a piece of furniture. Caustic strippers react with the natural tannins in oak, mahogany and other hardwoods, and the result is a dark stain burned into the timber rather than a clean surface. Peel Away say plainly that Peel Away 1 may damage some hardwoods and types of oak, and that it should not go near aluminium. A stripped oak door with a black bloom across it is a worse outcome than the paint was. Their advice to run a sample pack across a few test patches first is the cheapest hour you will spend on the job.
Surfaces repainted repeatedly across several decades often need both. Peel Away suggest an application of the neutral product to clear the modern coats, followed by the caustic one to reach the pre-1972 layers underneath.
Lead paint on pre-1980s woodwork
If the woodwork predates the early 1980s, assume there is lead in the lower layers until you know otherwise. HSE states that lead pigments were widely used in paints for homes, schools and offices until the 1960s, and were not removed from all commonly used paint until the early 1980s. The sale of lead carbonate and lead sulphate paints was banned in the UK in 1992. Given the age of most UK housing stock, that covers a very large number of front doors, sash windows and staircases.
How HSE says to handle it. Leave paintwork alone where it is sound, and only strip back paint that is flaking, chipping, giving off dust or posing a risk to children. Where you do strip, control the dust and fume by using chemical paint stripper, wet abrasive paper and a scraper, on-tool extraction with an H or M class unit, or infrared equipment. Do not use blowlamps or gas torches on leaded paint, and keep hot air guns and infrared equipment below 500°C. Wear RPE with an assigned protection factor of 20, meaning an FFP3 disposable mask or a half mask with a P3 filter, and note that a tight-fitting mask needs a clean-shaven face to seal. Use plastic sheeting to contain the work, wear disposable gloves and coveralls, wash hands and forearms before eating or drinking, and keep children and pregnant women away from the work area. Source: HSE, Construction hazardous substances: Lead.
This is the single strongest argument for chemical stripping over the alternatives on old woodwork. A sander turns lead paint into airborne dust, and a heat gun run hot turns it into fume. A poultice turns it into wet waste you can lift off with a blanket and bag up. Wet waste is a great deal easier to keep out of your lungs than dust is.
Five paint strippers compared
The five below cover the realistic situations: a cheap first attempt, indoor work where fumes matter, furniture and detail, many coats of modern paint, and pre-1972 lead and oil paint.
| Product | Type | Base | Active chemistry | Size and price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Nonsense Paint & Varnish Stripper | Gel | Water-based | Benzyl alcohol, formic acid | 500ml, £8.19 |
| Home Strip | Liquid | Water-based, solvent free | Not stated on listing | 2L, £25.49 |
| Biostrip 20 | Thickened liquid | Water-based | Not stated on listing | 500ml, price varies |
| Peel Away 7 | Poultice paste | Water-based, pH neutral | Not stated on listing | 750g upwards |
| Peel Away 1 | Poultice paste | Caustic | Alkaline, needs neutralising | 5kg upwards |
Prices are taken from the retailer listings linked under each entry and were checked in August 2026. “Not stated on listing” means the listing does not disclose the active ingredient, rather than the product not having one.
No Nonsense Paint & Varnish Stripper: the cheap first attempt
Start here if you are stripping one door and want to find out how bad the job is before spending real money. Screwfix list the 500ml tin at £8.19, which works out at £16.38 per litre, and the specification confirms a water-based, non-caustic formula with benzyl alcohol and formic acid as the hazardous content, at 34.65 g/l VOC. It carries 3.6 stars across 1,317 customer ratings, which is a fair reflection of a product that works but asks for patience.
Worth knowing before you set off to the store: it is 18+ only under Screwfix’s Challenge 25 policy, store collection only, and the 500ml listing currently flags limited stock and points to the 2.5 litre version as the alternative. The chemistry is the same class as current Nitromors at a fraction of the price per litre, which is useful to know before paying brand money for benzyl alcohol.
Who should skip it: anyone working on carved or moulded timber, where a liquid runs off the detail and a poultice holds its position.
Home Strip: best for indoor work
Home Strip is the pick when you cannot open every window, because it removes the ventilation problem rather than managing it. Toolstation list the 2 litre tub at £25.49 from Eco Solutions, described as solvent free, VOC free, non-irritant, and safe to use around children and pets, with the listing stating it does not give off fumes or toxins and does not require ventilation or outdoor working. It is also sold on Amazon in 1 litre and 500ml sizes.
The specification that matters most is the working time. Toolstation state it keeps wet and working for up to 24 hours, which is the whole trick with modern water-based strippers. Old solvent products flashed off fast and worked fast. These need to stay wet to keep working, so anything that buys you dwell time is doing the heavy lifting. The listing names lead-based, oil-based, solvent-based, fire-resistant and water-based paints among what it removes, on wood, metal and masonry.
Who should skip it: anyone in a hurry. Twenty-four hours of working time is only an advantage if you have twenty-four hours.
Biostrip 20: best for furniture and detail
Biostrip 20 suits smaller pieces where you want to watch the paint lift rather than leave a job overnight. FUZE Products, the manufacturer, describe it as a water-based, non-toxic, non-flammable and non-caustic formula, thickened so it clings to vertical surfaces without drips, with paint typically blistering or softening after 20 to 30 minutes depending on paint type, thickness and temperature. It is sold on Amazon in 500ml and 5 litre sizes.
The manufacturer’s own tip is the useful one, and it is free: cover the treated area with cling film or polythene to stop it drying out and speed up the strip. That is the same principle as the Peel Away blanket, improvised with something already in the kitchen drawer. It works because a stripper that has dried has stopped stripping, whatever the tin says about strength.
The product has a following among model painters stripping miniatures, which is a fair indicator of how it behaves on fine detail without eating the substrate. Non-caustic also means no reaction with oak tannins, so it is a safer choice than a poultice on a stripped-back hardwood piece.
Peel Away 7: best for many coats of modern paint
Peel Away 7 is the poultice to use when there are a lot of coats and none of them are pre-1972. It is a low-odour water-based paste that Peel Away describe as pH neutral, naturally degradable, and free of both methylene chloride and caustic soda, intended for modern paints and varnishes and usable on almost any surface from sandstone to fibreglass. Being pH neutral, it needs no neutralising step, and it washes off with warm water. It comes with green blankets, where Peel Away 1 uses red ones, which is a small detail that stops you ruining a test patch by pairing the wrong blanket with the wrong paste.
On Amazon it is available in 750g, 4kg and 10kg tubs. The 750g size is the one to start with, since poultice coverage depends entirely on how thickly you trowel it on, and everyone applies it too thinly the first time.
The critical advantage over Peel Away 1 for furniture restorers is that a neutral paste does not react with tannins, so oak and mahogany come out the colour they went in.
Peel Away 1: best for pre-1972 oil and lead paint
Peel Away 1 is the only product here designed to take decades of old oil and lead paint off in a single application. Peel Away rate the system at up to 32 coats in one go, which is why it is the professional choice for period property work rather than a weekend purchase. It is caustic, so it demands proper protective equipment, and porous surfaces need neutralising afterwards with the dedicated 1 litre neutraliser, which comes included with the larger units. Neat vinegar handles smaller jobs. Amazon stock the 5kg and 15kg tubs.
Two hard limits from the manufacturer. It is not compatible with aluminium, and it may damage some hardwoods and types of oak through the tannin reaction described above. Skipping the neutralising step is the classic error, and it does not announce itself immediately. Residual alkali left in the timber attacks whatever finish you apply next, so the job looks fine for a fortnight and then starts failing.
Who should skip it: anyone working on post-1972 paint, on oak, or without a respirator and eye protection. Peel Away 7 covers the first two cases and asks less of you.
When a sander or a heat gun beats a stripper
Chemical stripping wins on shaped timber and old paint, and loses on flat modern surfaces. A poultice reaches into beading, mouldings and carved detail that no abrasive can follow, and it does it without lead dust. On a run of plain skirting board painted in the last twenty years, an orbital sander is faster, cheaper and less messy, and our guide to the best sanders for skirting boards covers what to use.
Heat guns occupy an awkward middle ground. They are quick on thick paint and they cost nothing to run, but the HSE ceiling of 500°C applies to any pre-1980s woodwork, and most consumer heat guns run considerably hotter than that on their high setting. There is also the scorching problem, which is less serious than lead fume but harder to fix, since a burn mark on stripped pine survives every finish you put over it.
Before committing to any of this, it is worth asking whether the paint needs to come off at all. HSE’s advice on leaded paint is to leave sound paintwork in place and key it for a fresh coat with wet abrasive paper rather than disturbing it. Our guide to painting over flaking paint covers the cases where stabilising and repainting is the better call.
What it costs to strip a standard door
Budget £25 to £35 in materials for one internal door with a few coats of modern paint, and considerably more for a period door. The maths is worth doing before you commit, because the cheap tin is rarely the cheap job.
| Job | Product | Rough materials cost |
|---|---|---|
| One internal door, modern paint, both sides | 2L Home Strip at £25.49 | £25 to £30 |
| One internal door, modern paint, test first | 500ml No Nonsense at £8.19, likely two tins | £16 to £25 |
| Chest of drawers or small furniture | 500ml Biostrip 20 | £15 to £25 |
| Period front door, many coats, pre-1972 | 5kg Peel Away 1 plus neutraliser | £90 upwards |
Costs are materials only and assume you already own scrapers, gloves and eye protection. They exclude RPE, which is not optional on old paint.
Coverage is the figure that catches people out, because it depends on how thickly the product goes on and how many coats are underneath. Manufacturers quote a range for exactly that reason, and the honest planning approach is to buy for the layer count you can see in a test patch rather than for the surface area. A door that turns out to have eight coats on it will drink twice what you budgeted.
Once the timber is bare, exterior joinery needs a finish before the weather gets to it, and our decking oil guide covers the exterior wood options. For interior repainting, our paint roller guide covers what to put it back on with.
FAQs
Does paint stripper damage wood? Solvent and water-based strippers are generally gentle on timber and are widely used in antique and restoration work without discolouring the wood. Caustic strippers are the exception. They react with the natural tannins in oak, mahogany and similar hardwoods and can leave a permanent dark stain, which is why Peel Away advise against using their caustic product on some hardwoods and types of oak.
Does vinegar remove paint from wood? Not on its own. Hot vinegar softens some paint enough to make scraping easier, but it will not dissolve or lift a modern coating, and it does nothing useful on multiple layers. It has one genuine role in paint stripping, which is neutralising a caustic poultice like Peel Away 1 on smaller jobs.
Does water-based paint stripper raise the wood grain? Slightly, in the same way any water on bare timber does. It is easily dealt with by letting the wood dry fully and then keying it back with fine abrasive paper before finishing. The effect is far smaller than most people expect, and it is not a reason to choose a solvent product over a water-based one.
How do I know if my paint contains lead? Age is the first indicator. HSE notes that lead pigments were widely used until the 1960s and were not removed from all commonly used paint until the early 1980s, and the sale of lead carbonate and lead sulphate paints was banned in the UK in 1992. Home test swabs are available, and laboratory analysis of a paint sample gives a definitive answer. Where the age is uncertain, treat it as leaded and follow the HSE controls.
Do I need to neutralise the surface after stripping? Only after a caustic stripper. Peel Away 1 leaves alkaline residue in porous surfaces that must be neutralised with the dedicated neutraliser or neat vinegar, otherwise it attacks the finish you apply next. Peel Away 7 and the water-based liquids are pH neutral and need nothing more than a thorough wash with clean water and full drying before repainting.
