Artex was applied to ceilings across Scotland from the 1960s right through to the 1990s, and plenty of homes in Edinburgh, Fife and the Borders still have it. The catch is that older Artex often contains white asbestos, which makes DIY removal a genuine health risk rather than a weekend job. Here is how to deal with it safely, and when covering it over is actually the smarter option.
Textured coatings applied before 2000 can contain chrysotile (white) asbestos, typically at low levels of around 1 to 5 percent. You cannot tell by looking, and the age of the house is not a reliable guide either, because Artex was often applied decades after a property was built. Tenement flats, ex-council houses and 1970s estates around Edinburgh and Fife are all common candidates.
Before anyone sands, scrapes or steams that ceiling, get a sample tested. A UKAS-accredited lab test usually costs somewhere in the region of 30 to 60 pounds per sample, and several Scottish labs offer postal kits or can arrange collection. Take the sample carefully: dampen a small area, remove a coin-sized piece into a sealable bag, and double-bag it. If you are not comfortable doing that, a surveyor or an experienced plasterer can arrange it. If the ceiling was applied after 2000, asbestos is very unlikely, but testing is still the only way to be certain.
Asbestos-containing textured coatings are classed as lower risk than insulation or lagging, so removal does not legally require a licensed contractor in most domestic cases. It is still notifiable non-licensed work in many situations, and it absolutely requires proper controls: sealed room, damping down, correct masks (FFP3 as a minimum), disposable overalls, and disposal at a site licensed to accept asbestos waste. In practice, most homeowners are far better off paying a specialist.
Honestly, though, full removal is often the wrong call. Scraping asbestos Artex off a ceiling is slow, messy and expensive, and it frequently damages the plasterboard or lath and plaster behind it. The safer and usually cheaper route is encapsulation: leave the Artex undisturbed and cover it.
Plastering over is the most common fix we carry out. The ceiling is sealed with a bonding agent such as PVA or a specialist primer, then skimmed with two coats of finishing plaster to leave a flat, modern surface. Heavily stippled patterns sometimes need a base coat first to bury the peaks. For a typical bedroom ceiling of around 12 square metres, expect roughly 250 to 500 pounds depending on access, pattern depth and how sound the existing ceiling is.
Overboarding is the better option where the Artex is flaky, the ceiling is uneven, or the pattern is very deep. New plasterboard is screwed through the Artex into the joists above, then skimmed. It adds only about 15 millimetres to the ceiling height, gives you a fresh surface with a longer lifespan, and fully seals any asbestos in place. It costs more than a straight skim, but on older ceilings it often works out better value because you are not fighting a failing surface.
A negative test opens up more options. Steaming and scraping works but is laborious and can gouge the surface, so you will almost always need a skim coat afterwards anyway. Chemical Artex removers such as eco-friendly gel strippers do the job with less mess, though a large ceiling can take a full day or two of scraping overhead, which is harder work than most people expect.
In most cases we still recommend skimming over rather than stripping, simply because the finished result is the same and the labour is a fraction of the effort. Whatever route you take, check the ceiling is sound first: tap for hollow spots, and look for water staining or sagging, which are common in older tenement and cottage ceilings across the Borders.