How to Clean a Monitor Without Damaging It

Screen coatings are softer than the glass under them. Here is the method that removes everything without stripping an anti reflective layer or leaving streaks.

Most screen damage attributed to accidents is actually cleaning damage. The coatings on a modern display, particularly matte and anti reflective ones, are thin polymer layers that are softer than glass and dissolve in solvents that feel perfectly harmless. The method below takes three minutes and will not strip anything.

What you need

• Two clean microfibre cloths, the tighter woven kind sold for spectacles or cameras.
• Distilled water. Tap water leaves mineral spots as it dries, which is most of what people mistake for streaks.
• Optionally, a soft brush or a hand blower for loose dust in the bezel.

What not to use, in order of how much damage each one does: glass cleaner, anything containing ammonia, isopropyl alcohol on a coated panel, acetone, washing up liquid, baby wipes, paper towels and toilet paper. Paper products are wood, and wood scratches coatings. Spectacle wipes are formulated for a different coating and often contain alcohol.

The method

1. Switch the monitor off, or open the black screen. A dark screen reflects, so you can see exactly what you are removing while you remove it. This is the single biggest improvement over cleaning a screen that is showing a desktop.
2. Let it cool. A warm panel dries liquid before you have wiped it, which is how streaks form.
3. Blow or brush the loose dust off first. Wiping grit across a coating is how a screen picks up fine scratches.
4. Dry pass. Wipe with a dry microfibre cloth in straight overlapping strokes, not circles. Most dust and most light smears come off here.
5. Damp pass, only for what is left. Dampen a corner of the second cloth with distilled water, never spray at the screen, and work on the marks that remain. Liquid sprayed at a panel runs into the bezel and reaches the electronics.
6. Dry immediately with a clean part of the cloth, again in straight strokes.
7. Check on white. Open the white screen full screen. Streaks and missed patches are invisible on black and unmissable on white, which is why the check goes at the end and the cleaning goes on black.

Use almost no pressure throughout. On an LCD, pressing hard enough to flex the panel is what causes the blurred bright patches covered in the white spots guide. Support the back of a laptop screen with your free hand.

Things that will not come off with water

Adhesive residue from a sticker, or ink from a whiteboard marker used on a screen by mistake, needs a solvent, and a solvent needs care. Use the smallest amount of isopropyl alcohol at 70 percent on a cloth, never on the screen, and test on a corner first. If the cloth picks up any colour at all, stop: that is the coating coming off, and it does not go back on.

Grease from a fingertip usually does come off with water and patience. Do not escalate to a solvent for it.

OLED, matte and touchscreens

OLED panels have no backlight, so the pressure concern is lower, but the coating concern is higher and burn in is a real thing. Clean them with water only, and keep static bright images off them, which the OLED burn in guide covers.

Matte coatings are anti glare layers with a textured surface, and that texture holds dirt that a glossy screen would shed. They need the dry pass done properly rather than a wetter cloth. Cleaning them aggressively polishes the texture flat in patches, which is permanent and looks like a shiny smear that no cleaning removes.

Touchscreens usually carry an oleophobic coating designed to shed finger oils. It is the most solvent sensitive layer of all and it wears out on its own after a couple of years. Water and a soft cloth only.

How often, and what cleaning will not fix

A dry pass once a fortnight and a damp pass only when something needs it is plenty. Over cleaning a screen wears the coating faster than the dirt ever would.

Finally, some things that look like dirt are not. A mark still visible when the monitor is off is in or behind the glass. A soft bright blur on the black screen is a pressure mark behind the panel. A sharp coloured dot that survives every colour is a stuck pixel, and the stuck pixel fixer is the tool for that. Run the monitor test after cleaning to confirm what is left is actually on the surface, before you scrub at something that is not.