Wall and ceiling yellow after 4 months!!

I had an apartment handover yesterday. I rented the apartment from 01.05.08 to 30.09.08. The walls were freshly painted at that time. The management believes that the walls in the living room (approx. 22m2) are now yellow because I smoked and wants to charge me 600.-. I have to say I am a smoker, but I work 100% and spent 2/3 of the time at my boyfriend’s place. It was summertime and during the time I was there, I kept the terrace door open. My question: is it even possible that the walls have yellowed so much in such a short time and especially so evenly, or could the problem be the paint that was used back then? I would get expert advice from someone who could maybe come on site and see the situation for themselves. Or can someone give me a tip on how I can defend myself?

Thanks in advance
Regards
Marzena

Hello Marzena! Of course it is possible that the walls turn yellow from smoking. We also had a case like that in the neighborhood. The lady did not live here for long and always smoked in the apartment, and when she wanted to hand over the apartment, the owner complained about the yellow walls. Back then, she simply had to repaint everything; but regarding your case: 600 euros do not seem realistic to me, really seek advice from an expert.

Why didn’t you just repaint the walls? Then you would have saved money. Although 600 euros is way too much...

But if you smoke a lot in the apartment, mainly the ceiling discolors and not the entire apartment. Especially not evenly!

Could it be that the walls are not okay? I would ask the neighbors how it looks there. Because if you haven't smoked much in the apartment, then I can't imagine that it immediately affects the walls like that.

I would say that this is quite normal usage. After all, smoking in the apartment was not forbidden to you! But I do find it pretty crazy that the wall has already discolored after such a short time, I wouldn’t have thought that possible!

Hello,

It may happen that if a lot of smoking takes place in an apartment, the walls discolor. But if not much smoking occurred, then it is impossible that it comes from smoking. You just need to check how the ceiling looks or how it looks above a radiator. Because where the heat forms, that is where you first see the nicotine stains!!!
It can also be that the previous tenants were heavy smokers and only used normal ceiling paint, because then over time all the nicotine comes back to the surface. Because if you want to paint walls where smoking took place, you have to use nicotine-blocking paint so that the nicotine can no longer come through.

mantafan