How to Dust Intricately Carved Wooden Furniture

If you have a house full of carved wooden furniture like I do, you've probably discovered that dusting and polishing can take a very long time. It's not the actual dusting that takes so long; it's trying to reach the teeny tiny nooks and crannies found in the wooden scrollwork, carved flowers, and the other ornamentation found on old furniture. These places are tough to reach and impossible to clean with just a plain old dust cloth and Pledge.

Fortunately, there are easier ways to reach those dusty areas. If you have fine antique furniture, the safest way to remove dust from the carved areas is with a very soft watercolor brush. These brushes can reach inside tiny nooks and crannies and will wipe away dust without damaging the finish. I use a 4" Bamboo Hake Brush for removing dust from the larger carved sections, and switch to a smaller sable brush for intricate areas. The system I use for "detailing" my antiques is how our local museum cleans antique furniture as well.

Of course, not all furniture requires this amount of detail. For dusting the nooks and crannies of everyday furniture, these methods also work:

Q tips are a cheap, disposable alternative to watercolor brushes. While Q tips do a fine job removing trapped dust on furniture with a polyurethane finish, they are not recommended for use on older, rough finished furniture since the cotton fibers will catch on the unfinished wood.

Vacuum cleaner with upholstery brush. For more contemporary carved furniture with a tough top coat or even old furniture that has not been sealed, vacuuming the carved areas with a soft upholstery brush also works quite well. Vacuuming won't get everything, but what's left in the crevices can be easily dusted away with a bristle brush.

Lambs wool duster. I like the no-fuss convenience of removing dust with a lambs wool duster on all my everyday furniture. The static charge found in wool dusters attracts dust like a magnet without tossing it back in the air to settle elsewhere. As with the upholstery brush, the lambs wool duster is a fast way to dust large sections of carved areas but isn't that great at capturing the bits of dust trapped in the nooks and crannies. These too will have to be brushed away with either a sable or bristle brush.

For reaching impossibly tough areas canned air works like a champ to knock sticky, stubborn dust out of the corners. Since canned air can actually freeze the surfaces it touches, this furniture dusting solution needs to be used with caution so as to not damage a delicate finish.