How to clean silver at home - effective ways to care for jewelry and dishes

Every home will have some silver items. Unfortunately, this noble metal is sensitive to environmental influences. Products may turn yellow, black and even green, losing their sophisticated appearance. Learn how to clean silver at home to keep your jewelry, cutlery, antique coins and more looking like new. Decide when you can get by with improvised means and special liquids, and in which cases it is better to turn to specialists.

How to clean silver jewelry - general recommendations

Jewelry includes a wide variety of products: smooth and openwork rings, rings with inserts of various stones, bracelets, chains, pendants, earrings. The compositions of the alloys from which these items are made may also be different. Accordingly, approaches to cleaning each type of product will differ. However, there are general recommendations for high-quality cleaning of silver items.

The silver has darkened

First of all, it is advisable to wash silver jewelry that has lost its chic to remove banal stains. To do this, soak them for two hours in a warm solution of soap or detergent, then clean hard-to-reach areas with a soft brush. Sometimes only this is enough to return the jewelry to a completely acceptable appearance.
For cleaning, do not use materials with abrasive particles, hard sponges, or brushes.
When using special jewelry cosmetics for silver, you should not overdo it: they contain a lot of strong “chemicals” that can harm your jewelry. You must follow the instructions.
When cleaning, you should not use rubber gloves: rubber contains sulfur, which causes silver to quickly darken. Nitrile gloves may be worn if necessary.
Regardless of the method used, cleaning should be completed by rinsing with warm water and drying with a soft cloth.
Silver items should not be left wet after washing: moisture is contraindicated for them, as stains will form on the surface.
It is better to entrust the cleaning of too dirty or very valuable silver items to a jeweler.
Having returned the jewelry to its original appearance, you should not put it on right away. You need to wait until a natural protective film has time to form on the surface. A few days are enough for this.

Clean without risk of damage

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How to restore shine to jewelry without inserts and stones

Silver rings, earrings, pendants and bracelets without inserts are easy to clean from dirt and dark deposits. Any of the methods described below are suitable for them. The main thing is not to forget that silver, especially jewelry (standard 925, 960), is a relatively soft metal, and cleaning it with coarse abrasives is unacceptable. This fact must be taken into account when choosing how to clean silver: after all, if you scratch the surface, you can lose the pleasure of using an elegant piece of jewelry.

Ring without inserts

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Ammonia - a hero in the purge

The most common and effective way to restore the enchanting shine of jewelry is to use ammonia. You can choose any of the proposed recipes according to your taste (more precisely, according to your “smell”). In the first case you need:

Buy ammonia at the pharmacy (10%).
Place the jewelry to be cleaned in a glass container, pour a little undiluted alcohol into it so that it covers the products.
Leave for 15 minutes.
After this period of time, remove the silver from the dishes, rinse well with water, and dry.

Important: Ammonia solution has a very pungent odor. It is necessary to work with it in a ventilated room, on a balcony or outdoors. You should not bend low over a container with liquid: this can cause burns to the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract in sensitive people.

It is important to wipe silver dry

The second recipe involves diluting ammonia and using additional components. To implement it, simple steps are required:

Add a tablespoon of ammonia to a jar containing 250 ml of cold water.
After mixing the solution, add a few drops of hydrogen peroxide and baby shampoo into it.
Immerse silver jewelry or cutlery that needs cleaning in the resulting “cocktail” for 15 minutes. If after this the appearance of the jewelry has not improved much, you can leave it for another 15 minutes. However, you should not keep it in the solution for more than an hour.
When a positive result becomes obvious, remove the improved items, rinse, wipe with a microfiber cloth and admire the result.

The third recipe for cleaning silver with your own hands also works effectively:

Mix tooth powder with ammonia solution to a pasty consistency. Instead of powder, you can use finely ground chalk.
Using a piece of cotton wool (cotton pad), apply the resulting paste to the silver item.
Leave for sufficient time for the cleaning mixture to dry.
Wipe the product with a dry soft cloth, then rinse and wipe dry.

Simple but effective “cleaners”

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Life hacks from the kitchen - cleaning silver without problems

In any kitchen, next to the housewife, there are a lot of affordable and effective cleaning products, sometimes completely unexpected. When silver rings or bracelets begin to unambiguously hint that it’s time to put them in order, you just have to look around - there’s an option for how to clean your silver at home.

You can name a number of liquids that will help restore jewelry to its original noble appearance:

A good remedy for getting rid of plaque and mold is table vinegar (6%). Using it for this purpose is elementary. The vinegar should be slightly warmed, a small soft cloth, or a cotton pad, should be soaked in it, and the metal should be thoroughly wiped.
If you mix 100 ml of the same vinegar with 50 g of baking soda and leave silver items in it for 2 hours, they will delight you with their shine.
This “cleaner” can be fun to use, but it cleans metal remarkably well. You need to pour Coca-Cola into a saucepan, immerse the decorations that need cleaning into it, heat and boil the contents for 3-5 minutes.
Tomato ketchup (surprisingly, isn't it?) is suitable for cleaning tarnished, smooth silver items. They need to be placed in a cup with ketchup for a few minutes, after which the remaining ketchup should be removed with a sponge or cloth.
Another amazing remedy is the water left after boiling eggs. After cooling it to a warm state, place silver objects in water for 20 minutes; they can be easily cleaned.
The hot broth left after cooking potatoes in their jackets also miraculously removes plaque from the surface of silver items placed in it in a quarter of an hour. The effect will be enhanced if you place a piece of foil on the bottom of the dish.
Egg yolk helps clean silver items and protects them from further contamination. You just need to apply it to the surface, leave it until it dries, and then rinse off.

Yolk and potatoes will easily brighten silver

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Five handy tools from the kitchen and bathroom

Continuing the list of kitchen life hacks for cleaning silver at home, we should pay tribute to garlic peels. Some people collect it for later use in the garden. It will also help to cope with severe contamination of silver cutlery and coins if you prepare a concentrated decoction of the husks, dip the items in it and boil for 20-50 minutes (until the blackness disappears). The process will speed up if you add a tablespoon of salt per liter of broth.

Table salt itself is also a wonderful helper in ridding silver items of plaque. Moreover, it is always available in the kitchen, and the method of using it is simple. It consists in the following. You need to prepare a solution at the rate of: a teaspoon of salt per glass of water, and boil the darkened spoons or glasses in this composition for a quarter of an hour.

Garlic peels should not be thrown away

Baking soda is just as easy to use. Having poured it into a small container, you need to add a little water, bringing it to a paste-like state. With this paste you need to carefully wipe the surface of the product using a soft rag, napkin or toothbrush. If the paste collected on a rag turns black, it must be replaced, preventing the black from smearing over the surface of the product. In a few minutes the silver will sparkle.

When cleaning silver items, many housewives give priority to tooth powder or toothpaste. This simple method can be used, keeping in mind that the pastes must be of high quality and non-abrasive. Whitening, gel paste or paste with colored inclusions are not suitable in this case. To clean silver with this method, you don’t need any special skill: you need to act by analogy with soda (and without fanaticism!).

A woman will always find another tool that helps clean a ring or other small item in her own cosmetic bag. Just smear the surface with lipstick (not hygienic!) and wipe it well with a cotton pad - the blackness on the silver is gone!

Toothpaste is great for cleaning metal

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Several original ways to clean silver

There are already many options for cleaning silver from blackness at home. But no fewer ways can be named: in any matter, the reserves of folk wisdom are inexhaustible. We recommend using several methods:

Place the shell of a raw egg in a small saucepan, add 500 ml of water, add a teaspoon of salt. Bring the contents to a boil, remove from heat. Immerse items that need cleaning into this “broth”. In just a minute you can admire the updated decorations or cutlery.
Dilute citric acid (100 g) in 700 ml of water, place the dishes with the solution in a water bath. Place a piece of copper wire and silver objects at the bottom. Soak for half an hour in a water bath.
Spray the silver with window cleaning liquid and wipe with a soft cloth.
Place the product in yogurt for a few minutes.

Lipstick - and the dark coating is gone

The next method deserves more detailed consideration. It is not much more complicated than the previous ones, but at the same time it acts quickly and incredibly effectively. The method is based on the use of food foil; there are several options.

The first method of cleaning silver with foil (for light stains):

Prepare a glass of water, a piece of foil the size of your palm, a teaspoon of salt or its mixture with soda.
Tear the foil into pieces, put it in water, add salt.
Stir everything until the salt dissolves.
Immerse decorations in the solution.
A quarter of an hour is enough to achieve the result.

You can see how effective the use of foil is by watching the video.

Video: How to clean silver at home

Another method (for deeply soiled jewelry):

Line a small container with foil and place silver jewelry on it in one layer.
Sprinkle the products with baking soda.
Pour boiling water or potato broth until the liquid covers the silver.
Watch for 3-5 minutes as the miracle process takes place, as a result of which the jewelry will literally become new and can be removed.

Cleaning silver using foil

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How to clean a silver chain

Of all silver jewelry, chains are especially susceptible to the blackening process, since they come into the greatest degree of contact with the human body. Due to their relief, dirt accumulates more strongly and is less accessible to action than plaque on a smooth ring or bracelet. At first glance, the cleaning procedure for these products seems too complicated. In fact, when cleaning silver at home, chains do not cause much trouble.

Darkened silver chain

Almost all the methods presented above are applicable to cleaning such jewelry. Additionally, it is worth considering a couple of methods for cleaning chains with very high levels of contamination. The first of them is removing blackness with citric acid:

Pour 500 ml of water into a stainless steel bowl.
Dissolve a package of citric acid (100 g) in water.
Place the chain in the acidic solution.
Boil for 5-10 minutes, leave for half an hour.
Remove the product from the solution and rinse under the tap. In this case, you can notice that the silver has noticeably brightened, but there is no shine. The procedure should be continued.
Pour 100 ml of water into a plastic bottle (for example, after liquid soap), add 30 ml of detergent.
Place the chain in this container, screw on the lid and shake vigorously for 5-10 minutes.
Remove the shining chain, rinse and wipe dry.

Important: The described method cannot be used to clean blackened products: the acid, along with the contaminants, will remove the blackening.

The chain shines after cleaning

Now about how to clean a silver chain with ammonia at home:

Pour 500 ml of water and 50 ml of detergent into a stainless steel container.
Dip the silver chain into the solution.
Boil for up to 10 minutes.
Add ammonia solution (10-20 ml), leave for 15 minutes.
Remove the chain and wash it.
Repeat steps 6-8 from the previous recipe.
The boiling and holding processes can be lengthened depending on the degree of blackening of the product. If cleaning is not sufficient, it is recommended to repeat it.

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Silver has turned yellow - what to do

So far we have been talking about the darkening (blackening) of silver, which most often occurs from exposure to sulfur contained in human sweat and in the environment. But sometimes a very unsightly yellow coating appears on silver jewelry, which is difficult to get rid of. The culprits may be substances from the halogen group. At home it is usually iodine. And when visiting a swimming pool, chlorine can be harmful if it is used to disinfect the water.

The silver has turned yellow

To remove yellowness from a silver item, cover it with grated raw potatoes. Under the influence of the starch contained in it, iodine stains will change color, acquire a bluish tint to match the color of silver and become invisible. For this purpose, you can use ready-made starch by sprinkling it on the silver.

You can also try to clean the yellowed product in a soap solution:

Prepare 200 ml of liquid soap solution in water.
Add a teaspoon of ammonia to it and stir.
Dip the silver into this mixture and leave for half an hour.
Remove the jewelry, clean with toothpaste, powder or baking soda (the methods are described above).
Rinse with water, dry with a soft cloth.

Exquisite jewelry with stones

If the use of home remedies does not produce results, you should resort to using special cleaning products for silver. These are, for example, the domestic “FLUR”, the Italian Silbo, and its German analogue Dipping Bath for Silver. Such compositions must be used strictly according to the instructions.

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Features of caring for certain types of silver products

Having understood the numerous methods of cleaning silver, it is necessary to pay attention to some types of products made from this metal that require a special approach. These are items with various types of coatings and finishes, as well as jewelry with stones.

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How to update jewelry with stones

When planning to clean silver items with stones, you need to take care of the safety of the latter. It should be noted that stones are used to decorate not only jewelry, but also various accessories, decorative items, and dishes. In this case, care methods should be used sparingly, taking into account both the properties of the metal and the characteristics of the stones. It will not be possible to list them all, but it is important to mention some:

Aquamarine, emerald, sapphire have a high density. Almost any cleaning method is not harmful to them. But if the stones are not secured in the frame with the help of paws, but are glued, soaking them in liquid (especially hot) is contraindicated: the jewelry may come off.
Stones such as turquoise, moonstone, malachite, opal are not so dense - the use of mechanical cleaning leads to scratches on their surface. For them you should choose mild detergents and baths.
Garnet, ruby, and topaz do not tolerate hot water - their color changes due to increased temperature.
Stones of organic origin require especially careful handling: coral, pearls, amber. Due to their exceptional sensitivity to alkalis and acids, it is advisable to entrust the cleaning of these materials to specialists.

It is important to consider the properties of the stone

In general, if possible, it is better to give any silver items with stones to professionals for cleaning, or use special compounds sold in jewelry stores. Jewelry cosmetics reliably remove dirt and cover products with a protective layer that prevents them from oxidizing in the future. Experts recommend the brands Leuchtturm, Aladdin, the already mentioned Silbo, Talisman.

But if the urge to do things yourself is irresistible, try this home method:

Rub laundry soap.
Add a little water and 5-7 drops of ammonia.
Bring the mixture to a boil (do not boil!).
After cooling the composition, apply it to the metal with a soft brush and rub.
Remove the darkening around the stone with a cotton swab moistened with the same product.

Silver jewelry with pearls

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How to make pearl jewelry shine

For jewelry with pearls to look presentable, they require very careful systematic care. The simplest way to clean such products from contamination is to “bathe” them in a warm foam bath. To do this you need:

Prepare a washing solution from 200 ml of heated water and a teaspoon of shampoo (liquid soap).
After immersing the products in the liquid, leave for an hour.
After removing from the bath, rub the openwork parts with a cotton swab or soft brush.
Wash the jewelry, dry with velvet cloth or flannel.

The native element of pearls is salty sea water. You can pamper him with a spa treatment with salt:

Place silver jewelry with pearls on linen or cotton fabric, sprinkle thickly with salt (not iodized!).
Tie the fabric with its contents into a tight knot.
Fill a basin or large bowl with water at room temperature.
Rinse the bundle in water until the salt dissolves.
Rinse, dry, and enjoy the result: this water procedure will remove the blackness from silver and the yellowness from pearls, returning the product to its original appearance.

Rhodium plated silver item

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Subtleties of caring for rhodium-plated silver

Rhodium plating is the application of a protective layer of the noble metal rhodium (platinum group) to a silver product. Thanks to this coating, silver items become more durable and do not turn black, since the rhodium layer is not subject to oxidation. Special cleaning liquids for silver and the cleaning methods presented above are not suitable for cleaning such products, and there is no need for them.

To regularly clean rhodium-plated silver, using a soap solution and a soft cloth will suffice. It is also worth using the wipes offered by jewelry stores for the care of rhodium-plated silver. They are impregnated with special compounds. Simply by wiping a rhodium-plated ring or bracelet with such a napkin, you can admire its shine, pleasing to the eye. Wipes are especially convenient for caring for silver watches.

The main concern of the owner of rhodium-plated earrings and chains is not cleaning them, but protecting the protective layer from damage. Rhodium does not tolerate the effects of sweat and sebum well - you need to remove jewelry covered with it at night, as well as when going to the gym, bathhouse, or sauna. You should not put the protective coating at risk when washing dishes or washing clothes; let your favorite things spend this time in the box.

Silver glass holder with gold plated

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How to return gold-plated silver to its original appearance

Caring for gold-plated items does not cause much trouble; the methods for cleaning gold plate are as follows:

A slightly dirty product should only be wiped with dry suede.
More contaminated items should be wiped with a cotton swab soaked in turpentine or alcohol.
You can dip a gold-plated item in a vinegar solution (dissolve 2 tablespoons of vinegar in a liter of water). After keeping the item to be cleaned in this liquid for a quarter of an hour, rinse it and wipe it with a suede cloth.
A truly folk method: immerse gold-plated silver jewelry in a container with beer, hold for half an hour, then rinse thoroughly and polish with suede.
It is useful to periodically polish the gilding with a piece of suede or flannel moistened with egg yolk or the same beer. By the way, rhodium plating will also like it.
Gray stains from gilding are removed with ammonia.
Lipstick will help to clean the gilding on small items, but you shouldn’t overdo it: lipstick is still an abrasive, albeit a very gentle one.
You can add shine to gilding by wiping the surface of a cleaned and cut onion, and then polishing it with suede.

Blackened silver jewelry

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Proper care of blackened silver

Black is a clear dark design on a light background; blackened products look noble. But if you decide to clean silver at home, there is a risk of causing irreparable harm to such jewelry. If the light areas have darkened, it is difficult to clean such silver. It is unacceptable to use abrasives, boiling, or ammonia - all these methods will inevitably lead to the destruction of the cellulose. However, the following methods will work:

Prepare a soap solution with a pinch of salt added, and immerse the items that require cleaning in it. Wait 15-20 minutes, rinse and dry the cleaned items.
Place chopped raw potatoes in water, place the items to be cleaned in the same place, and let stand for 4 hours. Rinse and dry the silver.

Silver plate

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How to wash silverware

Silverware and cutlery for the most part do not have inlay. Any methods recommended for silver items without stones are suitable for cleaning them. Ammonia, potato broth, salt, and soda are also suitable... there are countless ways to do this. It is worth taking a closer look at another option for using soda in relation to cleaning silverware. To implement it you need to do the following:

Prepare an old aluminum pan. If there is none, line the bottom and walls of any pan with baking foil.
Place silver cutlery in a container.
Add baking soda, sparingly.
Pour in water until it covers the silver completely.
Cover the top with a sheet of foil.
Place the pan on the fire, wait until it boils and immediately turn off the heat.
Leave the container with the contents for 20 minutes, after which remove the silver, rinse, wipe and enjoy its transformation.

Transforming Silverware with Baking Soda and Foil

You have studied many ways to clean silver at home, you can test them in practice and make sure that sometimes it is useful not only to understand the brands of special cleaning products for silver jewelry, but also to be able to properly use the materials at hand. However, before checking the proposed options in practice, it is better to consult with specialists so as not to risk a valuable item for the sake of possible savings.