What To Do If Your Vinyl Decal Won't Stick

Watch my video here for tips on how to pick the right materials, prepare your surface and tricks for when your decal won’t come off the backing paper, or if you’re having issues sticking vinyl to a surface.

Or check out some written tips below…

Prepare your surface

First of all, make sure your surface is ready.

If you’re using wood it needs to be sanded and/or smooth with no rough bits left, and clean the wood of any shavings once it is sanded. The vinyl should still stick if there are some bumps but you won’t get as smooth of a finish. If you have a non-porous wood it may be best to stain or paint it, but do leave some time for it to dry and cure first before applying the decal.

If you want your vinyl to last on your wood a long time, some much more in-depth information on how to achieve this can be found here: https://blog.signwarehouse.com/how-to-apply-vinyl-on-wood/

Perspex, Mirrors, Metal and other flat smooth surfaces are much easier. If they’re brand new and aren’t likely to have had any treatments or cleaning products on them yet then you shouldn’t really need to do anything and can apply straight away.

If you do think they may need a thorough clean then either use a multipurpose or glass cleaning spray, or if you need to get rid of oilier/greasier marks then there is the option of using cleaning alcohol although don’t use that on anything that it may cause damage to.

If your decal is not sticking to your transfer tape

The best technique for getting your transfer tape to stick is flipping over the design and rubbing the back of the paper, and then pulling away gently and slowly, pushing down the letters again if they don’t stick to the tape.

If it’s hot where you are however, the transfer tape can sometimes lose some of its tack and the vinyl won’t come off the backing paper with it - if this is the case, stick the decal in the fridge or a cold place for a while and hopefully that should help.

If your vinyl won’t stick to your surface

So you managed to get the vinyl off the transfer tape, it’s placed on your chosen surface but you now can’t lift the transfer tape without bringing the letters with it.

Sometimes it does just take a bit of patience! But if you’re losing your patience, in opposition to my last tip, heat can actually help with this. Try blowing a haridryer over your decal (not too hot or too close) and that should hopefully help the glue to become more tacky and stick better to your surface.

Once your decal is applied properly it should last for a long time, without any need to do anything else to it. Some people do seal their decals but I haven’t personally done that in the past so would recommend doing further research into that if it is something you want to do.

If you have any other issues with applying vinyl that you would like me to cover, drop a comment below.