Painting or whitewash retaining wall

[andrew29]

Hi,

my concrete retaining wall has previously been painted. I’ve pressure sprayed off the loose paint and use peel away paint stripper on the remaining paint with an intention of getting it all off so I could whitewash it. My logic being that paint will fail on a retaining wall that inevitably has moisture coming through it.

1 application of peel away got most off, the 2nd application got a bit more off, but not all.

i understand that whitewash won’t adhere if there is any residual paint. So I’m leaning towards painting it.

do you agree? If I whitewashed the surface with some remaining paint, what would be the outcome (see attached pic). In the photo you can see the section that has had the 2nd application of peel away