Whether you’re trying to get the dust off your monitor or your kid’s
fingerprints off your gorgeous new HDTV set, removing dust, dirt, and
oil from the plethora of screens around you requires the right tools and
the right touch. Read on as we show you how to safely clean your
expensive screens.
Why Do I Want to Do This?
When you improperly clean your screen, be it your computer monitor or
your television, it’s only a matter of time before you damage it.
Modern HDTV and computer screens are brighter, sharper, and more
responsive than ever before, but they are also more delicate. It takes
quite a bit of manufacturing magic to create a razor sharp image in such
a slender form factor, and brute polishing it with a bottle of Windex
and a rag you grabbed from the kitchen is a sure fire way to shorten the
life of your screen and ruin the image.
It doesn’t cost much to clean it right and the keep your screen from hitting the dump prematurely.
What Shouldn’t I Do?
Normally, we start off How-To Geek tutorials by introducing the topic,
listing off the tools you’ll need, and getting right down to emphasizing
the “How” in How-To Geek. However, since so many people have been
cleaning their screens incorrectly for so long, we’re taking a different
tact today by starting off with a list of the things you shouldn’t do, because there’s a good chance we’ve all done them before.
Now, before we start listing off all the things you shouldn’t do to your
poor screen, let us cut any protest off at the pass. Already, we can
sense many a reader about to shoot back with “But How-To Geek! I use X
on my monitor and I’ve never had a problem!” In that same vein, you can
go ten years without changing the oil in your lawn mower. That doesn’t
mean that just because your lawnmower didn’t seize up or otherwise fail
on you, that going ten years without changing the oil is a good plan (or
even remotely recommended by the manufacturer or any mechanic). We’ve
all done dumb things with our gear but that doesn’t mean we weren’t
lucky to avoid ruining it or that we should continue to abuse it in the
future.
Never apply cleaning fluid directly to the screen. Spraying cleaning fluid directly onto your monitor or HDTV is an absolute recipe for disaster. Even though it has never
been recommended to spray a cleaning product directly onto a monitor or
television set, historically the CRT component of monitors and
television sets was essentially a giant glass vessel that was, at least
when approached from the front with a spray bottle, water tight. The
chances of you damaging a 2″ thick 1980s-era glass monitor screen with
a quick blast of cleaning fluid and a wipe with a rag were as close to
zero as you can get.
That’s absolutely not the case with modern screens. Flat screen
monitors and HDTV sets are made with layer upon layer of material
including various plastics, glasses, adhesives, arrays of display
elements, and other fine and very thin materials. When liquid touches
the edge of these finely layered screens that liquid can very
easily wick, via capillary action, right up inside the layers just like
water quickly moves across a piece of cloth that touches it.
The photo at the start of this section, with the horrible black blob
in the corner of the monitor, is an example of what happens when liquid
reaches the edge of a monitor’s display panel and wicks up inside.
Although the damaged spot may shrink slightly, the chances of the liquid
evaporating are next to zero and the chances of it evaporating without
leaving residual damage are zero.
Never use alcohol or ammonia-based cleaning fluid on your screen. We
understand why many people use window cleaner on their monitors, many
high-end flat screen computer monitors and HDTV sets have a nice glossy
glass screen. The problem, however, is that both ammonia-based cleaners
(e.g. window cleaners like Windex) and alcohol-based cleaners (diluted
rubbing alcohol or specialty alcohol cleaners sold in electronics
stores) can strip anti-reflective coatings off screens, cause clouding,
or otherwise damage the screen. Even if you have a glossy glass screen,
that screen is most likely coated with things that aren’t as durable and
chemically resistant as glass. Don’t risk using using alcohol or
ammonia-based cleaning fluids.
Never use paper towels or general purpose cleaning rags. At the risk of sounding like we’re repeating the same caution over and over again–modern displays are very delicate.
Paper towels are not designed for cleaning delicate surfaces, they’re
designed for wiping up bacon grease and hairballs; the surface of paper
towel, on a microscopic level, is fairly abrasive and can lead to buffed
spots and scratches on your monitor. In the same league as paper towels
are general purpose rags from around the house.
A single tiny spec of anything
abrasive in the rag (e.g. a tiny sliver of metal from the garage or a
hitch hiking grain of sand from a beach trip) will wreak complete havoc
on your screen. By the time you’ve made a pass or two with the tainted
rag, you’ve already left a scratch in the screen.
If you can steadfastly obey these three rules: never spray on the
screen itself, never use harsh ammonia/alcohol-based cleaners, and never
use paper towels or household rags, you’ll automatically avoid just
about every cleaning-related tragedy that could befall an unsuspecting
monitor.
How to Safely Clean Your Screen
Now that we’ve made you terrified of Windex and rags (as, on behalf
of your beautiful widescreen monitor, you should be), it’s time to get
down to the business of properly cleaning your screens.
Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that the best way to clean your
screen is to avoid having to clean it in the first place. This means
training your kids not to smash their snack-covered hands against the
television set in an attempt to high-five Bob the Builder, and training
your spouse not to tap on the laptop screen with the pad of their finger
to emphasize what they’re trying to show you.
The less you have to
clean your screen the better, and things like skin oil and other
stuck-to-the-screen stuff is so much harder to get off than simple
things like dust particles. That said, in even the tidiest of
households, a little cleaning must occur now and then.
The following cleaning instructions are meant to be followed in order
from start to finish; stop at the step that gets the job done and only
proceed if there is still dust or oil on the screen that needs removal.
Prepare the screen. At minimum turn the device off,
but ideally you should unplug it. Do not clean a screen until it is cool
to the touch. Cleaning warm/hot screens (like those found on plasma
HDTVs) makes them more difficult to clean at best and can damage them at
worst.
Dust the screen. Your step in cleaning a screen
should always be to remove as much from the screen as possible without
actually touching it. To this end a can of compressed air (held upright
and at least a foot or more from the screen) can be used to dislodge
most electrostatically-adhered dust particles. More ideal than a can of
compressed air (which can potentially blast your screen with residual
propellant from the can) would be to use a simple rubber dusting bulb
(much like the kind we used to clean out a DSLR camera). Remember, the less you touch your screen the better.
Lightly wipe the screen with a dry and clean microfiber cloth. Microfiber
is a miracle of modern technology; put it to good use. No paper towels,
no kitchen towels, no household rags; only microfiber should touch your
screen. For stubborn dust that won’t blow off the screen and the
occasional fingerprint, a simple pass with a clean and dry microfiber
cloth is usually sufficient.
When wiping the screen, always avoid making circular “buffing”
motions. Clean with a slow and light touch moving in as broad a motion
as you can either left to right or up and down across the screen.
Although the microfiber should pose little to no risk to the screen, by
avoiding cleaning in small circular motions you avoid the risk of
creating buffed out spots or whorl marks on the surface of the screen.
Light pressure and wide movements are the safest.
Lightly wipe the screen with a microfiber cloth dampened with distilled water.
While microfiber is usually quite good at lifting up the dust and oil
on its own, if you need some extra cleaning power feel free to slightly
dampen the the cloth with distilled water (avoid tap water as it can
leave mineral deposits and film on the screen).
Distilled water is
available at your local grocer and is commonly used for humidifiers and
irons. The cloth should be damp enough that it feels wet to the touch
but not so damp that any water could be wrung out of it. Remember: you
don’t want a single drop of water running down your screen and getting
inside the bezel.
Lightly wipe the screen with a microfiber cloth dampened with a 50/50 distilled water and white vinegar mixture.
For 99% of your everyday dust and finger prints, a damp microfiber
cloth will save the day. But let’s say that’s not cutting it because
your kid tried to feed Big Bird a piece of peanut butter coated toast
through the television set. This is where having an additional cleaning
agent to cut through the grime is necessary. Alcohol and ammonia are
out, but a mixture of 50% distilled water and 50% white household
vinegar is in.
After diluting the mixture down and lightly dampening your microfiber
cloth, use the same light pressure and wide movements we previously
discussed. There’s no need to follow the vinegar mixture with plain
water or a dry microfiber cloth (unless of course you made the screen
too damp — wipe up any excess moisture with a dry microfiber cloth
immediately).
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