Waterproof wallpaper!

 

How many times have you accidentally spilled a drink and it's splashed onto the wall, leaving a huge wet patch on your favourite pattern? Or how many times has the dog shaken himself dry in the hallway and left specks of muddy water all over the walls? Or how many times have you woken up early and made your other half breakfast in bed, then while lovingly carrying it to them tripped over your own feet and fallen flat on your face, leaving a giant milky-orange stain on the wall on the top of the stairs?

Okay, that last one might just have been me...

But the problem still exists: stains are a nuisance, and wallpaper is one of the main victims. As beautiful as it looks on the wall, it's never really got on with liquids, especially textured wallpaper. And it's not alone either. Furniture is often overlooked, but it has been bullied by the plague of liquid stains for centuries. Sofas have been utterly ruined by a clumsy, flailing arm, carpets have had to be dissected and dismembered just because of a tiny green patch that nobody quite knows what it is, and tables have been cruelly branded with the tea-stain ring of doom! If only there were a way to stop it. If only there were a way to fight back against the evil foes of red wine, coffee, and chicken korma. If only there were some sort of magic spray you could buy that would water-proof your walls and furniture so they would never stain again...

Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you Neverwet.




And no, this is not a joke. Neverwet is a genuine product, readily available in the United States, and costing only $20 per can (just over a tenner). It claims to be able to water-proof almost anything with just a few coats of the spray, and as the video shows, the results are mightily impressive.

You apply a thick base coat, allow it to dry, then apply a few layers of the top coat, and before you know it you have waterproof, stain-proof, and more importantly life-proof items.
You could coat your shoes in it, walk through a swamp, and the mud will just slide straight off. You could coat your clothes in it and be free of the horror of runaway hot dog mustard. You could even, if you had enough, coat your walls and furniture in it, and spill, spill, spill to your heart's content.

It's all to do with the "contact angle" of the liquid landing on the surface, and the difference between hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces. (Warning: science bit coming up!).
The contact angle is to do with how water droplets hit the surface of an object, whether as a small, round droplet, or as a flat splash. Hydrophilic surfaces love water, so the contact angle is less than 90 degrees, meaning the water lands flat and get soaked up. Hydrophobic surfaces like the one in the picture don't like water, so the contact angle is more than 90 degrees, which is why the water forms into little droplets. The contact angle on a non-stick frying pan for example is around 95 degrees.

The contact angle on a surface treated with Neverwet shoots up to around 165 degrees, classing it as "superhydrophobic". This is why the water doesn't just form into little droplets, but it is physically repelled from the surface. The droplets land in an almost perfectly round shape so they simply roll off, meaning your surfaces stay clean and dry.

There are still quite a few teething problems, as you'd expect with any new product. Many people are reporting a chalky, white residue being left on their items after they've been sprayed, and there is a lot of contention over how long the spray actually lasts, although the company have claimed that some of their test objects have "remained under seawater for over a year and re-emerged completely dry."

But one thing is for sure, this is most definitely the future of cleaning products. It may be a long way off, but I don't think I'm naive in predicting that this stuff, once all the problems are ironed out, will go into mass market production and many of our household items will come ready-coated in a Neverwet glaze. It will put an end to overloaded washing machines, a stop to uncharacteristic stains in places they shouldn't be, and will finally lay to rest the issue of having to drag a huge bag of washing all the way to the launderette, only to find that three of the machines are broken, and you didn't bring enough change for the only one that's left!

So keep your eyes peeled. We may not quite be there yet, but mark my words. In years to come, stains will be a thing of the past!

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