ᐅ Textured wallpaper in a smoker’s apartment: Is painting enough?

Hello everyone,

I will soon be moving into a new apartment. Wall condition: textured wallpaper, newly applied by the current tenant 5 years ago. All previous layers were removed beforehand.
The tenant has been smoking inside the apartment for 5 years. According to them, it was always with ventilation, but you can clearly smell it when entering the apartment.
However, there is no visible yellowing yet.
My question: Is it enough to simply repaint once to get rid of the nicotine odor? Would applying a "nicotine blocker" paint be a useful alternative, or is it inevitable to rehang wallpaper?

Best regards

Jari

Hello,
this will be difficult. After 5 years, you won’t be able to get rid of the smell completely without a thorough renovation. If I were you, I would prepare for repainting or re-wallpapering right away (including ceilings!). If there are carpets, they will need to be removed as well.

Best regards,

Andreas

Our tenant also said, "Only with draft." Result: All carpets and wallpaper were completely removed, ceiling cladding taken down, everything stripped back to the bare wall. Then everything was repainted with (very expensive!) paint and rebuilt from scratch.

Last year, we bought a house where people used to smoke. In the living room, we stripped everything down to the ceiling. We purchased expensive nicotine-blocking paint, but it didn’t help—it was still yellow. After that, we applied a primer and painted twice with Alpina. That worked well. Based on this experience, we directly removed the ceiling wallpaper in the kitchen. In the end, that was faster. There is no more smell (at least in the living room). The previous owner was a heavy smoker and smoked indoors. In your case, I could imagine that a nicotine barrier plus primer and a single coat of paint might be enough.