How to Clean Tempered Glass

A stack of tempered glass sheets.
What You'll Need
Dish soap
Water
Spray bottle
Soft sponge
Soft cloth
What You'll Need
Dish soap
Water
Spray bottle
Soft sponge
Soft cloth

While your tempered glass furniture or decorations may look great and add a great deal of personality to wherever you have chosen to place them, they will not look as attractive if they are dirty. Unfortunately, if you have tempered glass for long enough, this is inevitable. Before you clean your tempered glass, you should learn the proper cleaning techniques for this unique material. If you do not, you may accidentally damage it—defeating the purpose of cleaning it in the first place. What follows should give you all that you need to know to clean it safely and effectively.

Prepare the Materials

To begin, you will need to make a cleaning mixture to use, and the best ingredients are ordinary dish soap and water. Mix the soap and water in equal amounts, then pour the mixture into a spray bottle and seal it shut. Mix them together by shaking the spray bottle.

Washing the Glass

Tempered glass is actually very easy to clean, but it is also very easy to damage. Any small particles dragged over tempered glass repeatedly will scratch it, as will any rough surface rubbed against it. Because of this, you need to be very careful as to how you wash your glass and avoid taking any shortcuts. While shortcuts may save you time now, they may ruin your glass for good.

First, spray your tempered glass with a mixture of dish soap and water. Wait 10 seconds, and then wipe the glass clean with your soft sponge. Do not use a scouring pad, because it will be too rough for the surface; use the soft side of your sponge instead.

Doing this to the entire piece of glass at once can be tricky, so it is best to spray one section at a time and clean it with your sponge before spraying the next section, as opposed to trying to clean all of the glass at once.

Dealing with Difficult Spots

It is possible that some areas on your tempered glass are dirtier than others and will not respond well to ordinary washing. If you wash all of your glass and find that it's still dirty, you will have to give it some special attention. However, you must resist the temptation to use harsher methods since, again, they will damage your glass. Simply spot clean the dirty sections with soap and water until they are clean.

Drying the Glass

Use a clean, soft cloth to buff the glass dry. A microfiber cloth is a great choice for this, but any ordinary, non-abrasive cloth will do the trick. Be very gentle, as it is still possible to scratch the tempered glass.

If you perform these steps, your tempered glass should look as good as new when you are done.