How to Clean Brass and Bring Back Its Beautiful Shine

Our brass artisanal products are handmade using the best quality of solid brass. Like silver and gold, solid brass can look dull or tarnished with time, especially in a highly humid environment. This makes your beautiful brass items lose their glowing shine. Luckily, there are many ways to polish brass and make your items look as good and shiny as new.

Here are our artisans’ favorite methods to remove tarnish from brass without affecting its quality.

Checking Brass Purity

Before you learn more about how to make brass shine like gold, the first step is to check that your product is made of pure brass (i.e. brass that was not mixed with other materials). For our brass products, we guarantee that they are made using pure brass, so there is no need to check this step.

For your other brass-made products (those not acquired through Little Moroccan Things), you can check the purity of brass with a magnet. If the item is solid brass, the magnet won’t stick to the surface, in which case you can try the following methods.

How to Clean Brass

If you’re wondering how to clean heavily corroded brass or how to polish a brass lamp, these two methods are the ones recommended by our artisans:

1.Lemon and salt

Lemon and salt make an incredibly effective brass cleaner. All you have to do is coat half a lemon with salt and rub it on the surface of the brass item. Repeat if necessary. Cover the entire surface with the mixture, and use a dry and clean cloth to buff the item until it shines.

Another way to use lemon as a brass polish is to make a paste from lemon juice and cream of tartar by mixing them in a 1:2 ratio. Cover your brass lamp or any other item with the paste and let it stay for half an hour. Use warm water to rinse it and buff dry it until the item restores its lustrous shine.

2.WD-40 solution

Use a gentle rust cleaning solution like the WD-40 solution. It’s quick, effective, and easy to use. Cover the brass item with a layer of this commercial polish and let it stay for 15 to 30 minutes. Then, use a clean cloth to rub it in circular motions and buff it until dry.

Precautions to Consider

• Always make a test on a small surface.
• Avoid using highly abrasive scrubbing cloths, metal brushes, and steel wool brushes.
• Use a soft terry towel to apply a thin coating of mineral oil after cleaning the item to prevent tarnishing.
• For lacquered brass and gold lamps, make sure you remove the lacquer with paint remover or varnish before cleaning and polishing your items with some of the methods mentioned above. Don’t forget to relacquer your item at the end to protect it and restore its shine.