How to Clean the Outside of Your Stainless Steel Range Hood (3 Simple Steps)

Important: Avoid Damaging the Stainless Steel Surface

If you read nothing else in this post, read this section because it will keep you from scratching the surface of your beautiful stainless steel range hood.

• Avoid abrasive cleaners or bleach: Certain chemical cleaners can damage the metal, creating rough or discolored patches.
• Use a soft brush, cloth, or sponge: Avoid scrubbing with anything too hard or metallic, such as a Brillo pad. A soft brush, cloth, or sponge is less likely to scratch the surface.
• Rub in the direction of the grain: Stainless steel grains are those very fine brush lines or patterns you’ll see if you look closely at the surface. Brushing back and forth in the direction of those tiny parallel lines will help you pick up and eliminate any dust particles that get stuck there.

Daily Maintenance Cleaning

We’ll get into deep cleaning for tough spots in the next section, but here’s a quick tip to reduce the regular buildup of dirt and grease. Daily maintenance cleaning ensures that you won’t have to do in-depth cleanings nearly as often.

Dampen a microfiber cloth with some soapy water (regular dish soap is fine), and gently rub it over the entire stainless steel casing. Then rub it with a dry piece of cloth to soak up all the water and soap.

Doing this every day, or a few times each week, helps keep thick grime and hard-to-clean stains from appearing over time.

How to Clean Your Stainless Steel Range Hood

Even with daily maintenance cleaning, you’ll want to clean the outside of your range hood every 1 to 3 months, depending on how often you cook and whether you use a lot of oils. Follow these 3 steps for a thorough cleaning.

Step 1: Dry-dust and crumb sweep

Use a microfiber cloth to remove loose dust from the canopy, chimney, seams, underside edges, buttons, and lights.

Step 2: General cleaning

Create a solution of vinegar and water (50-50 of each) and pour it into a spray bottle. Do not spray the solution directly onto the vents or switches; spray it onto the microfiber cloth and wipe down the whole unit.

Wipe in the direction of the stainless steel grains and give it a thorough cleaning. Dry with a second microfiber cloth. If everything looks good and there are no tough spots or grease stains, you’re done! Otherwise, move on to the next step.

Step 3: Clean any stubborn stains

Sometimes grease builds up in certain spots, and you need something a little stronger than the vinegar solution. For these spots, you can use rubbing acetone with a microfiber cloth.

Keep scrubbing until all the spots are fully clean. If you need extra scrubbing power, you can use a Scotch Brite pad, as long as the pad doesn’t come with any abrasive chemicals or bleach.

Wipe everything down with a separate, damp microfiber cloth, and dry with a third towel. You’re all set!

Additional Cleaning Solutions

In addition to vinegar (for the general cleaning) and acetone for the tough spots, you can use the following to clean your stainless steel range hood.

WD-40 Specialist Industrial-Strength Cleaner and Degreaser: This bio-solvent is a water-based solution will help dissolve grease in a gentle but effective way.

Fantastik All-Purpose Cleaner: This spray solution works on a variety of surfaces, from stainless steel to granite, quartz, and plastic. It’s an excellent, affordable degreaser that will leave your range hood smelling nice.

Easy-Off Specialty Kitchen Degreaser: Not to be confused with Easy-Off’s popular oven cleaner, you can use this degreaser on range hoods, ranges, microwaves, and even kitchen countertops. It’s a strong solution that works well to break down grease.

Important: Do not use this one on aluminum surfaces.

Goo Gone Kitchen Degreaser: Goo Gone is known for dissolving sticky residue, and their kitchen degreaser works the same way. You can use it to clean range hoods, counters, stovetops, pans, and more.

What About Cleaning the Inside?

These tips only apply to cleaning the exterior of your unit. When it comes to cleaning fans and working parts, we recommend hiring a professional. If you’re ready to clean (or replace) the filters, check out our guide for cleaning range hood filters.

Regular cleaning, and the occasional extra scrubbing to dissolve extra grease buildup, will keep your range hood looking great and running well for many years.