Do you have a cleaning regimen for your house? Are there a certain number of times a year you have your carpet or tile cleaned? Do you have professional cleanings for those brocade curtains? Well you need to remember to put one more item on that cleaning list, your chandeliers. Crystal chandeliers are just as prone as other pieces of furniture to collect dust, and they need proper care to keep them shining.
Just like everything else in the house, chandeliers collect dirt and dust. Think about your fireplace mantle or other piece of furniture if you left it month after month without a good dusting. It would be a mess. Well, your chandeliers need the same attention the rest of your furniture gets.
The first thing you should do is preventative dusting. As regularly as you dust other portions of your home, you should use a feather duster on the chandeliers. If you have chandeliers installed on a vaulted ceiling, you may need to get a long extension for your duster to accomplish this job. If you are doing a whole house cleaning, you may want to do this part first, so the dust that falls to the ground will be picked up when you vacuum or mop later. When dusting, take your time and make sure you dust off each of the crystal components. The better this is done in dusting, the easier the pieces will be to clean down the road.
Eventually, dusting will not be enough. Your chandeliers will need a real cleaning. The recommendation is to clean chandeliers every three to six months, but this really depends more on where the chandelier is located than the calendar month. For example, if the chandelier is in a room that gets little use, and is a decorative piece that you dust regularly, it can get away with a cleaning every six months or so. Meanwhile, if you have a chandelier over the table in the kitchen, you will likely need to clean it every two to three months as it will be collecting the grease and other food and dust particles that are more prevalent in a kitchen space.
Another consideration to make, in deciding how often to clean chandeliers, is size. If a chandelier in your home is excessively large and very difficult to get to, you may push those numbers around a little bit and call in a professional to clean them once a year.
For do-it-yourself chandelier cleanings, many people use hot soapy water. It is recommended to use a mild soap, such as a dish soap, to make sure it has no ill effects on the metal components that make up the framework of the chandeliers. Not all metals react well to the chemicals in stronger soaps.
There are two ways to go about this cleaning. If the chandelier is not too inconvenient to get to, you may want to do the cleaning job standing on a chair or ladder. Just make sure not to get too complacent about being off the ground while you are cleaning.
If you would rather not risk falling, or have a dirtier chandelier, you may also remove the crystal pieces and bring them down to a level where you are more comfortable working with them.
Make sure to go over each piece of crystal with the cleaning solution, then a clean white cotton rag. If the metal is dirty, it too can have a quick wipe down. If you have a metal that could use a good polish, this would be the time to apply it. Just make sure to keep the polish on the metal, and off of the crystal.