How to clean your appliances, brand by brand

AEG ships pyrolytic, steam and catalytic across the same range, and the wrong assumption ruins a liner that cannot be replaced without a part order.

The badge on an Ariston has changed several times while the appliance underneath did not, which is why the model number is the only thing worth trusting.

One of the few brands that will sell you the kitchen and the outdoor cooking, which means an Artusi house often has two very different appliances to look after.

Asko's Pro Series fronts are large flat stainless panels at eye level, which is the least forgiving surface in a kitchen for a wrong wipe.

Baumatic went into apartment fit-outs by the hundred through the 2000s, which means the oven is as old as the block and has usually had two owners.

A Belling is not an oven, it is a range cooker: multiple cavities, multiple doors, and a second oven that has usually never been cleaned because it has never been used.

Bought as a kitchen rather than as an oven, usually by someone furnishing a first home, and supported through the shop rather than a manufacturer.

A German kitchen brand best known for sinks, whose ovens went into apartment developments by the hundred. Yours is very unlikely to be unusual.

The rough dark panel at the back of a Bosch is not baked-on grime, it is the cleaning system, and scrubbing it destroys it. Here is how to read your Series number and treat the oven accordingly.

More rental kitchens in Sydney have a Chef than anything else, which makes this the oven most end-of-lease inspections are actually looking at.

DeLonghi sold heavily into Sydney apartments through the 2000s. Almost every one we open is on its second or third owner and its first proper clean.

Electrolux owns Westinghouse and Chef, so the same cavity turns up under three badges at three prices. The tier number matters more than the name on the door.

Emilia sells a look as much as an appliance, and the wide gas range people choose deliberately is a different proposition from one that came with a house.

Second only to Chef for end-of-lease work in Sydney, which means most of these are cleaned against a date rather than a standard.

If you have an Everdure oven rather than a barbecue, you have the older Australian kitchen line, which has not been sold new for many years.

A Falcon is the heaviest domestic cooking appliance most people will own, and its bright trim is the part that shows every mistake.

The French door is the part that catches people out. Two independently hinged half doors are not two halves of a normal oven door, and they cannot be removed the usual way.

Franke ovens turn up in designer kitchens where they were specified alongside a Franke sink and hood, rather than chosen on their own merits.

On a five figure appliance the question is not what product to use. It is who carries the risk if something goes wrong.

Glem Gas is exactly what the name says. On a freestanding model the hob and oven are one machine, and cleaning one without the other makes little sense.

The Swedish name on the front is a product name, not a manufacturer. Underneath it is a Whirlpool appliance, and that is what parts cross-reference to.

An ILVE is not an oven, it is two or three ovens, a grill, a dozen cast iron trivets and a great deal of brass. The brass is what people ruin, and it happens in the first ten minutes.

A premium badge over Whirlpool group engineering, in a small Australian range that turns up in renovations rather than fit-outs.

Kleenmaid collapsed in 2009 and relaunched, which means a great many of these ovens have outlived their support. That changes what you should risk.

The enamel fascia across the front is what makes a La Germania look like a La Germania, and it is the part a careless cleaner ruins.

EasyClean sounds like a self-cleaning oven and is not one, and that gap between the name and the function explains most LG complaints.

Lofra's heritage styling is the reason people buy them, and the brass that creates it is the reason a careless clean shows for years.

PerfectClean is a finish, not a coating you can replace, and one pass with a scourer ends it. Here is how to tell whether your Miele has it, and what that means for every product you own.

The Slide and Hide door is the best thing about a Neff and the part every cleaning guide ignores, because no other oven has one.

Whole streets of NSW project homes have the same Omega oven, hob and hood, fitted on the same day and reaching the same point at the same time.

Dual Cook Flex is genuinely unusual: one cavity, one door, and a divider that turns it into two ovens with two seals to look after.

Siemens shares its cavity with Bosch and Neff, which means the same rule about rough dark panels applies here too.

Smeg sells three different self-cleaning systems under one badge, and the wrong assumption costs you a coloured enamel front. Here is how to tell which oven you have, then clean it properly.

These predate most current parts catalogues. A St George still running after forty years is not a problem to be solved, it is an appliance to be treated carefully.

Technika puts catalytic liners in ovens cheap enough that owners assume there is nothing clever inside, which is exactly why those liners get scrubbed.

A package kitchen deteriorates in a predictable order, and the appliance that gets cleaned most is the one suffering from the appliance that gets cleaned least.

There is no self-clean cycle to fall back on and no clever coating to protect. A Westinghouse takes an honest clean, and most of them in Sydney are ten to twenty five years into needing one.

Whirlpool builds appliances that reach Australian kitchens under at least four different names, which makes parts easier to find than most people realise.

MaxiSense means the heat is not where the markings suggest, and Hob2Hood means the rangehood above is working harder than you have noticed.

Another appliance where the badge has changed more often than the engineering, which matters the moment you need a burner cap.

An Artusi kitchen frequently comes with an Artusi barbecue outside, and the two want opposite products. Do not share a cloth between them.

On an Asko the glass is the easy part. It is the stainless surround around it that records every wrong wipe.

The middle appliance in a developer package: cleaned often enough to look acceptable, never taken apart, and sitting under a hood nobody has opened.

On a freestanding Belling the hob is not a separate appliance. It shares a fascia with the ovens below, which is why cleaner running downhill is the real risk.

Nobody chooses a Bellini hob individually. It arrives with the package, which means it is exactly as old as the oven and the hood beside it.

Fitted by the hundred into apartment developments alongside a matching oven and hood, and usually the middle appliance in a set nobody thinks about as a set.

Most Bosch cooktops sold in Australia are induction, which means the whole job is glass care. The marks people panic about are usually metal transfer, and they come off.

The most common cooktop in a Sydney rental, and the one most often cleaned with the wrong expectations because its glass looks like an induction hob.

Mostly gas, mostly Italian, and mostly old enough that the trivets have been through a great many summers without being lifted.

The same badge covers surfaces that need opposite handling, and the one people get wrong is the glass that looks like induction and is not.

A 900mm Emilia hob carries more trivet pieces than most people expect, and none of them are interchangeable.

Behind the control knobs on a rental hob is a ring of grease nobody has ever seen, and it is one of the first things an agent looks at.

The Everdure hob in your kitchen belongs to a line that stopped years ago, so the burner cap you crack is unlikely to be replaceable.

The griddle is the part people get wrong. It is not enamel and not cast iron, and it wants cleaning warm rather than cold.

These turn up in newer builds where the whole kitchen went in at once, which usually means the hob, oven and hood are all the same brand and all get cleaned together.

A Franke hob usually sits in a benchtop with a Franke sink beside it, and on a designer fit-out the benchtop costs more than the appliance.

A Vario benchtop can hold induction, gas and a teppanyaki plate in one cut-out, which means three surfaces and three methods within arm's reach.

Glem builds its range around gas, so this is a burner and trivet job rather than a glass one, and usually part of a larger appliance.

Search the rating plate, not the Swedish name. The appliance underneath is a Whirlpool and the parts world knows it by a different label.

A 120cm ILVE hob has up to twelve trivet pieces, several burner sizes and often a fry top. Photograph it before anything comes off, because putting it back is the hard part.

A premium badge on Whirlpool group engineering, in a range small enough that finding a part means knowing what else it is called.

On an orphaned appliance the burner cap you crack is not a twenty dollar problem, because there may be no cap to buy.

Heavy cast iron across the full width, sitting directly above the one panel on the appliance you must not get cleaner on.

LG's cooking range here is far smaller than its brand recognition, which makes the rating plate more useful than any search result.

On a Dolcevita the brass sits between the burners, which means the thing you must not clean is directly in the way of the thing you must.

The glass is the easy part. On a framed Miele it is the seal line between glass and stainless that quietly collects everything, and almost nobody cleans it until it stains.

The magnetic control dial comes off in your hand, which is exactly the point and also how a great many of them end up in a drawer or a bin.

Fitted into project homes as part of a matched set, which means the hob, oven and hood are all the same age and all reach the same point together.

Samsung puts a light where a flame would be on some induction hobs, which is useful and occasionally leads people to treat a cold surface as a hot one.

The printed circles on a flexInduction hob describe where the coils are, not where the surface gets hot, and that gap is where spills bond.

Smeg sells gas, induction and ceramic cooktops, and the cleaner that is right for one will scratch, cloud or tarnish the other two. Work out which surface you have before you start.

A burner cap you crack on a forty year old St George is not a small purchase. There may be nothing to buy.

Fitted into whole developments at once, which means whatever yours is doing, the same hob three streets away is doing it too.

Nothing on a Venini hob needs delicate handling, which means the only thing worth being deliberate about is what is above it.

If your glass cooktop stays hot long after the pan comes off, it is radiant ceramic, not induction. That single fact explains why spills weld themselves on and what to do about it.

Whirlpool sells both kinds of glass hob, and the one people assume they have is usually not the one they have.

A hood that switches itself on never reminds you it needs cleaning, which is the one real drawback of an otherwise excellent feature.

If a replacement filter seems unobtainable under the Ariston name, it is worth checking what the same hood is called elsewhere in the Whirlpool group.

These go into renovations rather than original fit-outs, which usually means a wider canopy than the kitchen previously had and a duct that has not changed.

A wide brushed stainless canopy hanging at eye level is the most visible surface in the kitchen, and the least forgiving of a careless cloth.

Fifteen years in an apartment, two or three owners, and not one of them has ever dropped a filter out.

In a package kitchen this is the appliance with no advocate. The oven smokes, the hob is visible, and the hood simply gets quieter about doing less.

In a matched apartment kitchen this is the appliance nobody thinks about, which is exactly why it is the one holding a decade of grease.

Bosch, Neff and Siemens hoods share more than their owners realise, which is useful when you are trying to identify a filter that no longer has a label on it.

On a hood this old the filters are the easy part. The question worth asking is what the duct above it looks like after two decades.

Three badges, one group, and frequently one filter, which is worth knowing when a replacement seems unobtainable.

A canopy sized to match a 900mm range is moving considerably more air than a standard hood, and usually on the same maintenance schedule.

A hood in a rental property has usually never been opened by anyone, because no tenant considers it theirs and no agent inspects above eye level.

A canopy over a Falcon range is extracting from a great deal more cooking than a standard hood, and it is usually cleaned on a standard schedule.

These are usually fitted into a bank of joinery in a newer build, which looks excellent and hides the one thing that actually goes wrong.

Franke is better known for sinks and hoods than for ovens, which means the rangehood is the appliance the brand actually cares about.

A Gaggenau extractor may not be a canopy at all. Downdraft and island units hide their filters in places people never think to open.

An IKEA hood in an apartment is usually recirculating, which means a charcoal filter is doing all the odour control and has probably never been changed.

A hood over a 120cm ILVE is extracting from five or six burners at once. It loads faster than any hood in a normal kitchen and it usually gets cleaned less.

On most hoods a filter that will not clean gets replaced. On a Kleenmaid it may not be replaceable, which makes the soak matter far more.

The hood above a La Germania range shares its worst risk with the range itself: anything that drips from it lands on enamel.

The hood is styled to match the range, which means it carries the same brass and the same rule about what may touch it.

A Miele hood paired with a Miele hob runs itself, which is the point of it and also exactly why its filters are dirtier than the owner thinks.

Neff, Bosch and Siemens hoods share more than their owners realise, which matters when a filter has lost its label and the model sticker has faded.

In a matched project-home package this is the appliance nobody thinks about, which is why it is usually the one furthest behind.

Hood filters lose their labels faster than anything else in a kitchen, which is exactly when it helps to know what else the same part is called.

The filters are the part everyone cleans and the part that matters least once they are soaked. The grease that causes the smell and the noise is behind them, in the fan housing.

A hood installed in 1990 has had thirty five years of vapour through its duct, and nobody has ever looked at it.

In a matched project-home kitchen the hood is the appliance that never announces a problem, so it is the one that has never been touched.

This is the appliance quietly setting the maintenance schedule for the two beside it, and the one nobody has opened.

These hoods outlast the kitchens they are fitted in. The filters are the easy part; the ducting above a twenty year old unit is the part nobody has ever looked at.

Fitted by developers in volume, which means the hood is as old as the building and has almost certainly never been opened.

A Beefeater plate that looks clean and grey has usually been ruined. The seasoning is the protection, and most degreasers take it off in one wash.

A Bull head is set into brickwork or stone, which means you cannot take it somewhere convenient. Everything happens where it sits.

Everdure by Heston is a different brand from the Everdure that made kitchen appliances, and its cast aluminium bodies will not survive a caustic cleaner.

Weber puts four incompatible materials under one badge, and the degreaser that is fine on a Genesis cabinet will permanently etch a Q. Work out what yours is made of before anything goes near it.

A Twin Grill is compact, which is the point and also why its grease tray overflows long before anyone thinks to check it.