Keep every cleaner off the chrome and brass trim rails, which caustic products dull permanently. Clean each cavity separately with a non-caustic cleaner, spraying onto the cloth so nothing runs down onto the fascia, and treat any door on a 900mm or wider range as a two-person lift.
Falcon sits at the premium end of Glen Dimplex, above its sibling Belling, and it makes range cookers in the British tradition: heavy, multi-cavity, and finished with a great deal of bright metal.
That bright metal is the whole difficulty.
The trim shows everything
A Falcon carries chrome and brass on its bullnose trim rails, its handle mounts and its control surrounds, and it is at eye level across the full width of the appliance.
Caustic oven cleaner dulls both permanently. So do most strong degreasers on brass, which goes blotchy where the zinc has been leached out of the surface. Metal polish will lift a light tarnish and does nothing for a chemically etched one, and on lacquered brass it cuts through the lacquer and leaves a patchy finish that is worse than what you started with.
The rule is absolute and simple: cleaner goes inside the cavity and nothing but warm soapy water goes on the trim, using a cloth that has not been used anywhere else. Spray onto the cloth rather than into the oven, because on a range cooker anything sprayed inside runs out over the door edge and straight down across the trim rail below.
Count the cavities
A Falcon at 900mm is typically a main oven plus a second cavity or a separate grill. The 1000mm and 1100mm models add more. Each has its own door, seal, racks and runners, and the racks are frequently not interchangeable.
Photograph the layout first, then clean the cavities one at a time rather than spraying everything and working across, which leaves cleaner sitting on one surface for an hour while you deal with another. Our oven cleaning guide covers the single-cavity method; run it two or three times.
The second oven, and the griddle
As on any range cooker, the second cavity is either almost clean or carries one memorable event from several years ago, with very little in between. Open it before planning your afternoon.
Most Falcons also carry a griddle or a separate hotplate section on the hob, which is its own surface with its own rules. See how to clean a Falcon cooktop.
The doors
Falcon doors are multi-glazed and genuinely heavy. Treat anything on a 900mm or wider range as a two-person lift, release both hinge locks before attempting it, and never allow a hinge to close on itself, because the springs carry serious force.
Keep every spacer and screw in order, because a multi-glazed door will not seal if one goes back in the wrong slot, and a door that does not seal costs heat on every use.
Why these are worth doing properly
A Falcon is frequently the most expensive single appliance in the house, and it is bought by people who intend to keep it. That changes the calculation on maintenance in a way it does not for a mass-market built-in.
An entry-level oven that is neglected for a decade gets replaced, and the neglect costs whatever a new oven costs minus whatever it would have cost to look after. A Falcon that is neglected for a decade does not get replaced, because replacing it is a five figure decision and a joinery alteration. It gets lived with, and every year of that is a year of cooking in an appliance performing below what it should.
The practical consequence is that the parts most people defer are the ones worth doing first: the door seals, which perish and cost heat on every roast, and the second cavity, which is easy to ignore precisely because it is easy to ignore.
It also means the trim rule matters more here than the same rule would elsewhere. A dulled brass rail on an appliance you will own for twenty years is twenty years of looking at it.
What actually goes wrong
Dulled brass or chrome, from run-down or from one cloth doing the whole appliance. The most visible and least recoverable Falcon mistake.
A second cavity nobody opened until the work was already underway.
A door that no longer seals, from a spacer in the wrong slot.
One person lifting a wide door.
Should you do it yourself?
Do it yourself for a single cavity, working one at a time and keeping every product away from the trim.
Get someone in if the doors need to come off, if the trim has already begun to dull, or if the range is 1000mm or wider, where it stops being an afternoon and becomes a day.