How to Clean Silver Easily at Home

Since time immemorial silver because of its properties like malleability, ductility, highest electrical conductivity etc, is being widely used for making jewelries, high quality cutleries (silverwares) or behind the glass in mirrors as reflective metal, in high voltage electronics (can withstand arching), in batteries and many more. It surely adds a touch of elegance to the jewelries and the cutleries, but on the other hand silver is also quite fragile compared to other commonly used metals and easily develops tarnish. In the starting it becomes bit yellow in color which can be removed quite easily but if ignored it turns brown and then black and becomes quite an uphill struggle to remove. Before heading towards the various ways of cleaning silver at home, lets us first have an insight of the main reasons for the tarnishing of silver. The sulfur present in air is the most prominent reason for this tarnish to appear on silver. A compound of sulfur, namely hydrogen sulfide (H2S), present in highly polluted areas acts as a catalyst in the formation of tarnish on the surface. Also the food elements (such as eggs, onions, olives, juices) and rubber or latex leads to tarnishing of surface of silver.

Now moving towards the things one should keep in mind to avoid tarnishing of their expensive silverwares and other silver articles. It is worth mentioning that you need not be a silversmith to clean silver. All you need to do is to take out some time periodically before the tarnish starts to turn brown or black. Also the more often you use your silverware the less of polishing it requires. After every use they should be hand washed using a phosphate free detergent in warm water. Never use automatic dishwashers as they can get banged around and gets scratches and also on coming in contact with steel electrolysis occurs which leads to corrosion. Silver also turns white due to heating and coming in contact with detergents.

Till now it was all about the reasons and the ways to avoid corrosion of silver, next comes the ways to remove silver tarnish. For this following are the few simple steps that you need to follow:

1) Separately wash your silverwares or any other silver item from other dishes or articles made of any other element in warm water.

2) While washing always remember not to use rubber gloves as rubber also corrodes silver. Instead you can use nitrile gloves as they don't have sulfur or its compound in it and does corrodes silver.

3) Next, polish your silver. For this you can buy specially formulated silver polishes available easily in the market and just follow the manufacturer's directions. To avoid scratches use a cellulose sponge or cotton balls.

4) Lastly rinse the silver in warm running water and dry it with a clean and soft cotton cloth.

Remember to wash and polish the silver back and forth in straight lines and not in circles. Also the metal gets removed on excessive polishing. So don't overdo it. Polishing your silver once a month is more than enough.