It's new for them and a revelation for me. Included in their box of samples was something new from them. I used it to this day on my own stainless appliances.Īs I mentioned at the outset, Scott's sent me some samples to use and clean with in exchange for this post and I'm really grateful for the products and the opportunity. In the years that followed, Scott's Liquid Gold stayed on my short list of product recommendations for maintaining a new kitchen. That leave behind stopped prints and smudges from appearing all together in the days that followed. All of the streaks and prints disappeared with a gentle rub and as a bonus, a very tiny bit of the oil in the polish stayed behind. When I sprayed a towel with Scott's Liquid and then wiped down the refrigerator door something really cool happened.

Window cleaner is lousy on stainless steel because it leaves streaks and it evaporates completely so skin oil from touching the steel just stays on the surface and deflects light. I mean, it's shiny like a mirror so clean it like a mirror. Honestly, it's the same thing I'd have used.

I asked the crew not to clean it for a week and instead to let me take charge of it for a couple of days.Ĭlients back then reported to me that they cleaned their stainless with window cleaner. Our cleaning crew had a stainless steel cleaning product that they used on it but it still ended up looking pretty dingy pretty fast. All of us in that studio used that refrigerator every day and clients were forever pawing it so it had a surface that saw a lot of hands touching it. In that kitchen was a Sub-Zero refrigerator with stainless steel doors. Our studio was set up with a couple of kitchen vignettes and one of those vignettes was a fully-functioning kitchen. That's not what popped into my head when I thought of sleek, shiny and modern stainless steel.Īfter that lunch with my rep, I went back to the studio and set up and experiment over the following week. Every surface in the home I grew up in had a almond-scented oily surface. All I knew about furniture polish in a can I observed from my mother's obsessive dusting with the stuff. I was taken aback because it seemed like such a strange recommendation. She told me to use a furniture polish, Scott's Liquid Gold specifically, to clean stainless steel. I had lunch one afternoon with my Sub-Zero representative and I brought up the fingerprint problem as an objection I needed to be able to address when I was talking to clients about stainless in general and Sub-Zero in particular.

But because stainless is practically a mirror, especially when it's a large vertical surface like a fridge, those prints and smudges are really obvious. Stainless steel, like any shiny surface, shows fingerprints and smudges very easily. People who had them already complained that they were impossible to keep shiny and people considering them wondered why they should spend more money for something that would look bad in the long run. Stainless steel refrigerators were just starting to catch on and at the time they were a lot more expensive that the-then default finish colors: white, black and bisque (shudder). I was interning under a kitchen designer in the '90s and we spent a lot of time talking to clients and potential clients about caring for stainless steel. Many years ago, when I was starting out as a kitchen and bath designer, stainless steel kitchen appliances had hit the mainstream in a very big way. Although it's a product I use and recommend already, I am being compensated for this post. A couple of weeks ago, I received a box of product samples from Scott's Liquid Gold Wood Care.

Liquid gold furniture polish