There is a fair chance your ceiling chandelier is a far cry from the earliest chandeliers – which were simply wooden crosses with four arms, with spikes nailed into the ends of each arm, so that candles could be driven onto them. These could be hoisted up to a suitable height with a rope. As you could imagine, these would drip wax all over your floor, blacken your roof with smoke, and probably not need very much cleaning – they’d need a lot more than cleaning to make them look presentable! As chandeliers grew more ornate, some kept the rope-hoisting apparatus – which has saved the heroes of so many movies, when somebody can swing down on it from above, dropping the chandelier on the villain and leaving the rope at just the right height for the hero or heroine to be swung to safety by their rescuer! While I’m sure we’ll neither be getting out the sandpaper and wax-scraping knife to clean your chandelier, nor unhooking the rope and letting it fall to the ground in order to get to it more easily, it is interesting to think of the earlier chandeliers.

By around the 18th century, more ornate forms of chandelier with cast brass arms (see our brass cleaning article), and sometimes huge numbers of refractive crystals, to help scatter and pattern light, could be found. Your chandelier is more likely to have electric bulbs than candles hooked up to it, although you will probably find many genuine older chandeliers have small dishes to help catch the wax from candles that were placed in them. These were often made of lead crystal, which was cheaper to make than traditional glass, and also softer and therefore more hardy – however, more difficult to blow. Lead crystal has a higher ‘index of refraction’ than normal glass, which is why it seems to sparkle more. Not that you are likely to, but the lead from lead crystal leaches readily into foods and drinks … important if you have lead crystal decanters or glasses, and if you are planning to serve dinner off your chandelier!

There are several ways to clean your crystal chandelier safely – and you might be glad to know that not all of them involve taking the actual chandelier off the ceiling (which can be heart-stopping!), and not all of them even involve a cloth! The Drip method involves putting a drip cloth underneath the chandelier – such as newspaper, or if you are very organized and a great recycler, a towel, which you can use to clean windows later. Grab your favorite glass cleaner, make sure your room is very well-ventilated and there are no kids or pets able to get into the room, or going to be passing through it. Use a dust-mask yourself, and keeping a portable fan nearby (with the air source away from the chandelier which you are going to spray) can give you a source of fresh air to breathe. Otherwise, try to breathe as little as possible. Then just spray, spray, and spray some more, until the solution starts to drip off the chandelier. A variation on this method, which requires more patient arms but also leaves less chemicals flying around the air in your home, is to fill a plastic container or bowl with glass cleaner, hop up on a ladder and hold the bowl underneath the chandelier, so that they crystals are soaking in the bowl, for thirty seconds or so per patch of crystals. Keep the drip cloth there for this method, too.

To give your chandelier a more thorough cleaning, take the light bulbs out and put them aside. Get everything ready beforehand, so you have a minimum of fussing around, grabbing random family members to hold your chandelier while you do this and that! Lay a folded towel over the bottom of a sink, dish pan or bathtub, depending on the size of your chandelier. Half fill your pan with medium to hot water – super hot water will make the glass crystals hot themselves, and more vulnerable to breaking – especially if you put them down on a cold metal sink! Add some soap or detergent, agitate the water to make suds. Fill another pan with clean hot water, to rinse with – and you can add some ammonia for extra sparkle, if you wish. Pad this pan also.

This part will test how much you love your chandelier, and will also give you a great workout, climbing up and down the ladder! If it is too difficult to take your whole chandelier down, or it is too large to fit comfortably in a sink or a bath, take a few of the crystal drops down at a time, wash them in the soapy water and rinse them in the clean water, then put them back straight away, to minimize the chance of forgetting which went where. When the arms have been bared, wash and rinse them in the soapy water also.

There are special crystal chandelier cleaners on the market, and if you feel more comfortable using one of these, do so. Always remember to follow the instructions on the bottle! And if you are buying a new chandelier, ask the salesperson about their recommended cleaning method – there’s nothing like advice from a professional.

          

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