How to clean your LED, QLED or OLED television screen

If your TV screen is dirty, maybe because you moved and just got it out of that old dusty cardboard box, or maybe it’s just been a long time since last time you cleaned it. In this post you are going to find information about both what you absolutely shouldn’t do and what you should do in order to clean your TV screen and while you’re at it, you might as well clean other parts of the TV.

First, what you should not use to clean your TV screen. It may seem counter-intuitive, but you do not want to use household cleaning products like glass cleaners and all-purpose cleaners. The reason why is that these products contain alcohol, ammonia and other chemicals that can damage your screen, maybe not instantly but eventually they’re going to cause damage to the anti-reflective layer and other coatings. Even if you have a glass screen on a plasma TV or one of those OLED models, stay away from the Windex. The other stuff you want to stay away from are these wood-based products like paper towels, facial tissue and toilet paper. These are fine for wiping your countertops, wiping your face and other things you need to wipe, but the tiny fibers in these products will end up scratching your screen. Again you may not see the effects right away, but in time all those micro scratches are going to end up creating dull spots on the surface of your screen, so that’s what you shouldn’t use.

Now about what you can use to clean your TV screen. If you want to buy products that are made specifically for cleaning electronic screens, those do exist. You can get wipes and there are some screen cleaning sprays you can use, but these tend to be costly and a little wasteful. Instead you can use microfiber cleaning cloths, distilled water and a little spray bottle, that’s it. In most cases, this is all you need. There are three levels of cleaning: the first is dry cleaning. If your screen is just dusty, then all you need to do is dust it. You could use a can of compressed air, but preferably you may use a microfiber cleaning cloth that has some bigger loops in the fabric, that gives you more dust retention area and you can usually get even the dustiest screens cleaned off with just one cloth. Just start at the top and work your way down and while you’re at it, dust the bezels and the back of the TV. Remember electronics like to attract dust thanks to the wonder of static electricity, but they don’t function so well with lots of dust in and on them.

If you somehow have fingerprints, or hand prints, or some other form of smudges then you will want to fill a little spray bottle with distilled water. Distilled water is key, because your tap water is full of tiny minerals and other particles that can and will scratch your screen. Turn off your TV, maybe even unplug it if you can, then you want to spray your cloth (a very fine microfiber cloth) just until it’s damp. You don’t want it soaking wet or it will drip and that could be bad news depending on where it drips. Then use a gentle circular motion to get rid of the smudge, it’s important not to use too much pressure or you could do some damage to the LCD cells in the panel, then go back with a dry cloth and make sure everything’s nice and dry.

That should do it for most jobs but there’s cases in which some nasty stuff somehow gets on the screen and water and microfiber may remove some of it, but then there’s some residue left behind that isn’t coming off. These tend to be oil-based, maybe there was a horrible exploding pizza, or hot wings incident. Anyway, it’s okay to have a separate bottle of water, with just a tiny drop of dish detergent in it. You don’t want too much or you’ll have soap streaks, but a tiny bit will be enough to tackle the toughest stuff sticking to your screen. Again keep with the small circular motions, then come back around with another microfiber cloth dampened with just water, then use a dry cloth to remove all water for a streak free TV. That’s it, simple tools used in a smart way is really all it takes to keep your TV looking its best, now go clean that screen.