The whole routine, in four lines
- Dust often, wash rarely. A dry pass takes two minutes and does most of the work.
- One microfibre cloth is the entire toolkit. No sprays, no kits, no gadgets.
- Water is the risk on timber, and barely a risk at all on PVC.
- Anything abrasive is the one mistake you cannot undo.
Painted timber: dry first, damp second
What you are really looking after on a timber shutter is the paint film, so start dry every time. Run a microfibre cloth along each blade, or use the brush head on the vacuum, tilting the louvres one way and then the other so you get both faces. Most of the year that is the whole job.
For the marks a dust will not shift, a cloth wrung out in warm water with a drop of mild detergent, then dried off behind you. What matters is that no water sits: not pooled on the blade, not run down into the joints, not soaked into the hinge. Timber takes moisture on and gives it back as the room changes, and standing water is what lifts the paint at the joins and opens a hairline gap where there was not one before.
Frames and sills collect more than the blades do, especially on a window that gets opened. Same cloth, same rule.
PVC: the forgiving one
Waterproof PVC has nothing in it for moisture to get at, so the same routine applies with the caution taken out. A properly wet cloth is fine. Mild detergent is fine. The film that builds up on a bathroom window over a few months comes off in one pass, which is a good part of why we put PVC in wet rooms at all. The detail on the material is in the wet-area guide.
What PVC will not forgive is a scouring pad. The surface scratches, and a scratched blade holds dirt in a way a smooth one does not, so you end up cleaning it more often, not less.
Hinges, rods and the parts that move
Grit in the hinge knuckle is what makes a panel feel notchy when you swing it, so the hinges are worth a dust whenever you do the blades. If one starts to squeak after a few years, a light spray of silicone lubricant onto a rag and wiped over the knuckle sorts it. Not oil: oil holds dust and it marks paintwork.
A front tilt rod only ever needs the same wipe as the blades. If a blade goes loose or the rod starts to feel sloppy, that is an adjustment rather than a cleaning problem, and it is a quick one at the window.
Bathrooms, and the mould question
Spot mould on any hard surface comes off with household detergent or diluted white vinegar. Rinse the cloth in a separate container of clean water rather than the one you are cleaning from, so you are lifting it off rather than moving it around, and never mix bleach with other cleaners.
The honest part is that wiping is not the fix. Mould comes back in a room that never gets a chance to dry, whatever the window furniture is made of. Run the exhaust fan for a while after a shower, and use the shutter the way it is meant to be used in a wet room: panels cracked open with the blades still angled, so the steam leaves while the window stays private. That habit does more than any cleaner.
What never to go near
Scouring pads, cream cleansers, solvents, bleach straight from the bottle, and steam cleaners pointed at a painted blade. This is the one place where a shortcut costs you something permanent: once the sheen is burnished off a painted louvre, or a PVC one is scratched, no amount of cleaning brings it back. Everything else on this page is reversible. That is not.
Shutters ask for a dust, not a project. Anything harder than a damp cloth is usually solving a problem the window does not have.
Not sure which rooms of your house should be timber and which should be PVC in the first place? Walk it through the Aspect Planner, or book a free in-home measure and we will go room by room with you.