How To Clean Silver Bowl At Home

If you're lucky enough to accept inherited a set of silver flatware or invested in some ornate candlesticks, you know that its smoothen can brainstorm to dull and tarnish in as little as a few months. This is actually because household silver (used for jewelry, platters, tea sets, etc.) is a composite of pure silver, which is very soft, and other, stronger metals like copper to create a long-lasting final production.

Tarnish on sterling silver can appear in the form of a xanthous-gray or well-nigh blackness picture show on the surface of an item, merely unlike rust which eats away at metal, tarnish is hands dealt with. Sterling silverish, similar many other metals, merely requires a bit of upkeep to maintain a mirror-like smoothen.

Lucky us, when we put out the call, y'all answered. Based on suggestions from our community, we tried six different methods—some shop-bought, some DIY—all on one lucky spoon. Read through our findings beneath to find out which methods didn't exactly stack up, and which was the clear winner.

Least Constructive: Toothpaste

2 readers, QueenSashy and Klrcon, suggested using toothpaste to make clean silver—but Boulangere said that it'south "abrasive and will scratch the silver, especially if information technology'due south not silver plate." Well, it didn't do all that much.

Definitely the to the lowest degree abrasive cleaner out of this lot, a whitening toothpaste but lightened the tarnish rather than removing it altogether—which, depending on your needs, might be enough.
Aroma is great and it's non a very annoying affair to go on your fingers because it merely rinses off.
Cost is minimal (and/or yous probably already have information technology on hand).

Most Aggressive: Hubcap Cleaner

The human being who sold me a set of silver-plate utensils (not mad at him, considering technically I didn't ask) recommended hubcap cleaner as the all-time way to get them squeaky make clean.

Far and away the most ambitious of the cleaners we tested, hubcap cleaner left the most silvery, shiny section—but stripped abroad all the skillful tarnish and fifty-fifty left a foreign splotch.
Dug upwards on a dorsum shelf at Home Depot, this wasn't the easiest bottle to source in New York.
Something about rubbing hubcap cleaner on a utensil you wish to eat off of later just feels...wrong.

Great in a Pinch: Lemon Juice & Baking Soda

"Oxidation on silvery can exist cleaned off with lemon juice and baking soda," Rebecca Harvey shared. Like shooting fish in a barrel enough to just reach in the fridge and pantry for these supplies, we set to piece of work.

Relatively abrasive, especially for an all-natural cleaner, this combination removed almost all of the tarnish (fifty-fifty some of the good kind) and left a slightly dulled sheen.
Fabricated by mixing upwardly two mutual pantry items, this i is something you lot'll always accept on manus—and very piece of cake to come up by if y'all don't.
The fizzing outcome was great fun.

Best Store Bought: Tiffany Silver Polish Spray

User Claire Smith recommended jewelry cleaner, and others got specific: "I think Wright's silvery polish is the best," said Molly Fuller (who was seconded past Boulangere). Chocolate Be raised the bar with her recommendation: "Each and every time you lot polish silver with anything but Tiffany silver shine (which is very expensive and I don't know if it is still even available) you lot volition be taking some silver off your piece."

Both highly constructive and gentle, this silver cleaner removed the dark-brown tinge of tarnish without getting rid of whatsoever of the good stuff.
Obtaining it was easy in New York Metropolis, where you can merely swing by the Tiffany's store even if you're wearing sneakers, but wouldn't be every bit simple to come by in other markets.
Spray feature made it piece of cake to glaze a piece quickly, and would accept been really prissy if y'all were cleaning a lot at once.
At $xx a bottle, it was the cheapest item in the Tiffany's store, but pricey comparatively. Wright'southward Silverish Cream.

With a strength comparable to the Tiffany'south cleaner, Wright's was very effective right from the bottle—though it did require a picayune more than time to become a loftier smoothen.
Sponge applicator doesn't brand total sense when you're cleaning forks rather than earrings, but did the corking work of keeping information technology mostly off your hands.
One of the lower-priced off-the-shelf cleaners, Wright's is piece of cake to obtain at any drug store or pharmacy and consistently depression in price.

Best Overall: Aluminum Foil, Baking Soda & Hot Water

Klrcon insisted that "for silverware the easiest method is the aluminum foil and blistering soda play tricks," which is something nosotros heard from a number of users. "Y'all merely dump information technology in the sink and allow it soak and information technology does a darn proficient task of getting fifty-fifty heavily oxidized tarnish off if you leave it long plenty... And so you lot but give it a skillful rinse."

Others suggested variations on this solution, ranging from Pegeen'south tip "to fill up an aluminum pan (or 1 lined with aluminum foil) with hot water, add together salt and blistering soda, and stir to dissolve. When you lot add the silver pieces, a chemical reaction occurs, removing tarnish." to our creative managing director Alexis' version, which chosen for just baking soda, stirred into hot water in a pan lined with aluminum foil.

A short soak in this solution loosened the night tarnish so that information technology rubbed right off, simply left only the right amount of lighter coloring that we dearest.
Beingness by and large water based, it was the least gunky solution to deal with.
As the baking soda and foil reacted with the silvery, the whole bath gave off a slightly strange, dirty scent.
Though it required a bit of set-up—lining a dish with foil, then dumping in baking soda and hot water—nosotros could see how this would be the easiest way to smooth a mess of silverware by far.

How to Clean Silver

The Verdict?

While truthful silver polishes, such every bit both Tiffany's and Wright'due south, cleaned the spoon very much to our liking (meaning thoroughly but without excessive abrasion), zero compared in ease, effectiveness, and lack of mess than the combination of blistering soda, hot h2o, and aluminum foil. It's all-natural, effective because of a chemical reaction (which we geekily love), and seemed impossible to mess upwards. We also loved how simple information technology would exist for cleaning a whole pile of silvery.

If you happen to live near a Tiffany's and don't mind forking over for a bottle, or have a tub of Wright's on hand for cleaning earrings, they wouldn't be bad in a pinch. Our tube of toothpaste didn't seem very effective, only the real business would exist that every tube is different so the potency would exist hard to moniter. Both lemon juice + baking soda and hubcap cleaner were then powerful nosotros'd be scared to try them on good silver—and the latter was just a lilliputian gross to consider for untensils.

Hither's How to Do It:

Line a casserole dish or shallow vessel with aluminum foil (or obtain an aluminum dish).
Sprinkle in a generous amount of baking soda.
Add the argent pieces, being sure that each piece touches the foil.
Pour hot h2o on top, wait until information technology cools, and and so remove each slice and rub clean with a rag.

Offset photo by Bobbi Lin; all others by Alpha Smoot.

This article has been updated in December 2022 to provide even more (!) silver-cleaning tips.