Disassembling and Cleaning a Chandelier

Because of the complexity of cleaning a large chandelier, it is one of the most often avoided home cleaning jobs. However, because a chandelier is such an eye catching lighting fixture, people will quickly notice dust and dirt that has collected there. A dirty chandelier does not reflect well on the quality of home cleaning being done in your house. It’s probably best to leave chandelier cleaning to a professional cleaning agency, but if you want to do it yourself, here is how you should go about it.

1. Check the manufacturer’s website for any cleaning tips/instructions and follow them. If they conflict with what is said here, follow the manufacturer’s instructions.
2. Make sure the bulbs are off and cool before starting.
3. Place a thick blanket or quilt on the floor to catch anything that may fall during the disassembling process.
4. Set up a step ladder securely and if possible, have someone to help you by taking each piece you remove and placing it safely on the carpet or you may end up climbing up and down the ladder far more than is comfortable!
5. Take pictures of the chandelier from various different angles or make a detailed sketch of it so that putting it back together again is easier.
6. Dust the complete chandelier before beginning with the disassembly
7. Remove all the bulbs
8. Starting from the outside, remove the pieces one by one and place them on the blanket. Removing pieces is usually straight forward with one piece hooking in to the next. If you are uncertain about how to remove the pieces and if the company website has no information about it, stop and get professional help.
9. Once all the pieces are on the carpet, place a few at a time into a plastic (not metal – it may cause scratches) sieve or colander and rinse with hot water.
10. Apply mild detergent and rinse it off. Repeat this process until all the pieces are clean.
11. Clean the metal pieces with a reputed metal cleaner specific to the metal type and then polish as required.
12. Keep doing this until the complete chandelier has been cleaned.
13. Allow everything to dry and then polish with a soft cloth
14. Start putting the chandelier back together again, starting from the inside and working your way outwards.
15. Refit the bulbs.

This will take time and effort. There are other quicker ways of cleaning a chandelier, and most of the time those options are fine. But to prevent dirt from getting ingrained, especially in the fasteners that hold the chandelier together, every fifth cleaning should be a complete one as described above.