When Daniella Glaeze showed off her newly bought 3D printed home on TikTok, the biggest question commenters posted had less to do with printing and more with cleaning.
“All I can think about is the dust and dirt catching on the layers,” one person wrote. Another comment on a different video saying, “I’m just thinking about dust on the wall ridges,” received over 19,000 likes.
It’s an interesting question, the kind that can come up whenever there’s a new industry innovation. In the case of 3D printed homes, the “ridges” refer to the horizontal layers of material that are left behind after the massive printing machine finishes.
So we set out to answer the question.
Business Insider asked four 3D construction printing companies about how to clean their walls. And the answer will have dust worriers rest assured.
A spokesperson from Icon told Insider that “dust has not been a concern” for their residents who have lived in these printed homes for several years.
“For cleaning, you’d treat it similarly to any painted wall, stone or brick wall, and as necessary, use a dust cloth or damp microfiber cloth to remove any dust and debris by wiping clean,” they said.
Daniella Glaeze, who currently lives in one of Icon’s 3D printed homes, previously told Insider that she hasn’t had any trouble with grime collecting in her home.
“The ridges on the wall are not like little shelves, they’re very thin,” she said. “Even if dust were to collect, I don’t think it’d be very noticeable, and the walls are very easy to clean, honestly.”
Detroit-based nonprofit Citizen Robotics similarly told BI that its printed walls “can be dusted like any other surface.”
However, Danish startup 3DCP Group said that cleaning measures for their homes depend on the type of post-treatment of their walls. CEO Mikkel Brick told BI that if “the walls are raw, you would need to vacuum them once in a while to combat the dust.”
Walls that have received a dust binder treatment or have been polished do not require additional action to maintain them, Brick said.
For those still concerned with potential dust-riddled ridges — or even people who just aren’t fans of the aesthetic — some homes do not have the layers showcased at all.
Mighty Buildings, a 3D printing company based in Oakland, California, 3D prints its panels in factories rather than on-site, a spokesperson told BI.
According to the company’s website, the interior of the printed walls is covered with PU foam insulation and a steel frame and then finished with primer and paint. This means that only the exterior has the classic printed texture on display.
“Our particular method for fabrication means that the interiors are finished in a more typical fashion,” they said. “As a result, there’s no difference in how you’d clean a regular wall and one of our walls.”
A Citizen Robotics spokesperson said that the company actually drywalls most of its walls and only has two 3D printed feature walls with exposed layers, leaving their homes mostly indistinguishable from a typically constructed house.
So if you’re thinking about moving into a 3D printed home, you can brush away any worries of dusty walls and complicated cleaning processes.
