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Venetian blinds mainly come in two different materials, being aluminium and wood (or faux-wood in some cases) respectively, and the best way to clean Venetian blinds will vary depending on which material you’re dealing with.
This blog post will tell you how to clean aluminium Venetian blinds if they are coated in a year-old layer of kitchen grease, or have gone straight past “a bit dusty” into “my toddler had a projectile-lunch-related incident” territory.
If you’re not quite there yet and your blinds are dusty rather than sentient, read this blog post on cleaning Venetian blinds that are dusty or have the odd spot on them instead.
The best way to clean Venetian blinds that are full-on filthy
Even if you’re very Stepford when it comes to dusting, you’re going to find that sooner or later most aluminium Venetian blinds will need a thorough deep cleaning to restore them to their former glory.
This is especially likely to be in the case if your blinds are in an area of the home that’s more prone to grime build-up, like the kitchen (due to humidity and the presence of fats and oils) or the bathroom (due to humidity once more, and the fact that the grime we hose off ourselves after a day’s work has to end up somewhere).
If they’ll fit in the tub, the best way to clean Venetian blinds that are really dirty is in the bath; but failing this, you might need to take them outside and do them on a pathway or patio or somewhere else where there’s plenty of room to lay them out.
Either way, first things first: your blinds need to come down. Pull the blind all the way up and then carefully un-clip it from its mounting brackets. You might want to get someone to give you a hand with this as the whole thing can be somewhat unwieldy when unsecured from its moorings, particularly if it is too wide to fit in a bath.
How to clean aluminium Venetian blinds in a bathtub
Aluminium Venetian blinds can scratch your bathtub, so you’ll probably want to put some rubber mats down (such as a non-slip bathmat, or thinking outside of the box without spending a fortune if you don’t already have a rubber bathmat, a Poundland rubber doormat), or a towel that you don’t like.
Then, fill the bath with warm (not hot) water just deep enough to submerge the blind, and throw in a mild cleaning solution like washing up liquid.
Put the blinds in next (if you overfilled the bath, you’ll realise at this point why I told you not to) and then using a sponge or a soft-bristled brush, just gently clean each slat from end to end, making sure to do both sides of them.
If your blinds are heavily stained or grimy with the ghost of years of airborne chip fat, you can leave them in the bath to soak for anything up to three hours; half an hour should be enough for most stains though and if not, I’d actually quite like to hear what you’ve been cooking.
When the grease is dissolved or the stains are ready to lift, drain the bath and rinse the blind off with the shower head.
If you don’t have a shower head and/or if the blinds were really greasy, you might need to empty and re-fill the bath to rinse them clean.
How to clean Venetian blinds that won’t fit in the bath
If your blind is too big to fit in the bath, taking it outside and laying it out on an old (by which I mean, sacrificial) blanket or ground sheet is the best way. To clean Venetian blinds effectively without soaking them, you’ll need a bucket of warm water and detergent solution, and a sponge or soft cloth.
Clean the slats thoroughly on both sides, and when they’re clean, either use further buckets of water or a hose (as by this point cool water is fine) to rinse them off with.
The one disadvantage to deep cleaning Venetian blinds without soaking them is that you can’t leave the water to it if there are stubborn marks or a grime build-up thicker than a teenager’s shirt collar, and so this approach can be a bit more labour intensive.
Basically just keep repeating the washing and rinsing if the first time doesn’t cut it, until you finally win or it gets dark enough for you to not be able to see and so, care about any remaining marks.
How to dry Venetian blinds
Whichever approach you took to cleaning your Venetian blinds, you actually need to dry them before you rehang them and you can’t just leave them to air dry back in situ.
If you have a long-ish shower rail you can hang them over this. If you don’t have anywhere to hang your blind other than back on its own frame, pat it dry with a towel or microfibre cloth, and lie it out flat somewhere until dry.
When you do rehang your blinds, give the cords in particular a quick blast with a hairdryer on a cool setting to ensure they are fully dry.
Do bad things happen if you rehang Venetian blinds when they’re still damp? Yes, I judge you. Also, they might become mouldy, which is apt to make them look manky and possibly not smell that great either.
