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This paper is based on the explorative study aimed at furthering the understanding of cleaning of acrylic emulsion painted surfaces and evaluating the effectiveness of gel cleaning with rigid gels without affecting the original paint layer. In the present study, the gellan and agar gelling materials were exploited for cleaning acrylic emulsion painted surfaces by optimizing their rheological properties using two application methodologies. The gellan and agar gels were used on soiled and unsoiled acrylic painted surfaces and micro-photographed at 50x magnification using Dinolite digital microscope under normal, raking and ultraviolet fluorescence light. The experimental results have demonstrated better contact, no loss of water and fair cleaning results for gellan gel as compared to agar. The effectiveness of the cleaning operation was also observed using ATR-FTIR and SEM-EDX in the present study. The results can be extended for cleaning of other sensitive painted surfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]