How to clean and maintain your mechanical keyboard

You’ve done your research, compared them all, and finally settled on a new mechanical keyboard that offers a great experience. Great! Buying a new mechanical keyboard, however, is just the beginning. It’s important to clean and maintain your new keyboard to keep it going for a long time in good condition. But like a lot of other peripherals, it’s not particularly easy to keep your keyboards clean at all times. Between greasy fingers, sweaty palms, and dust particles (to name a few culprits) your brand new keyboard can quickly turn into a dusty, grimy mess. This post aims to help you avoid that by giving you simple instructions on how to clean and maintain mechanical keyboards.

We recommend you perform a quick clean-up of your keyboard at least once a week. Even a quick wipe with a microfiber cloth will do, but it’s recommended you do it as often as you can. Besides that, we also recommend properly cleaning your keyboards once every few weeks. The gap between your cleanups can be increased or decreased depending on factors like dust accumulation, how much hair/skin you shed, whether you have pets, how much food you eat while sitting at your PC, and so on. So what kind of clean-ups are we looking at?

Simple Cleaning

Keyboard maintenance and cleaning Corsair K100

There are a couple of ways to clean your mechanical keyboard, but let’s take a look at the simple cleaning technique first. Before you begin, disconnect the keyboard every time you’re about to perform any kind of clean-up to avoid accidental key-presses or pulling the cable, among other things. When it comes to simple cleaning, you’re essentially just removing dust, crumbs, hair, or other debris that settles on the keyboard surface, and between the keycaps.

You can use a simple air blower to blow off the particles or loosen the debris that may have settled and then gently shake the keyboard after turning it upside-down to remove the loose debris from the surface. We don’t recommend using compressed air from a can to remove the debris, as we’ve seen cases where it can lead to condensation that can damage your keyboard.

Silicone Air Blower

Blow dust and debris off your mechanical keyboard with this air blower.

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You can also use a cleaning brush to remove dust and debris stuck between the keycaps or corners that are hard to reach. To remove sweat stains and smudges, especially ones on the keycaps or wrist rest of the keyboard, use a clean damp cloth. And that’s pretty much it when it comes to simple cleaning. It may not be enough if you haven’t cleaned your keyboard in months, but a simple cleaning process every few days is enough to avoid cumbersome deep cleaning.

Keyboard cleaning brush

This handy keyboard cleaning brush comes with a built-in keycap puller.

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Deep Cleaning

If you’re somebody who hasn’t cleaned their keyboard in a very long time or you accidentally dropped something on your keyboard, the cleaning steps mentioned above won’t be enough. You’ll have to perform a deep clean and the first thing you need to do for that is to remove the keycaps from the board. You can do that by using a keycap puller, a tool that’s usually bundled with a lot of keyboards. If yours didn’t come with one, use the link below to buy one from Amazon. The keycaps should come off easily, but be more careful while removing larger keys like Spacebar, Enter, Backspace, etc. as they have stabilizers for support and you can damage it if you’re not careful.

Keycap and switch puller

Remove the keycaps with this tool to give your mechanical keyboard a deep clean.

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It’s also a good habit to organize the keycaps as you remove them. Alternatively, you can take a picture of the keyboard layout before taking the keycaps off. This will allow you to easily reassemble the keyboard once you’re done cleaning.

After removing the keycaps, clean the entire deck using a cleaning brush or an air blower. If you spilled something on the keyboard in the past, like coffee or soda (hopefully not), use a damp cloth to wipe off the stains. For more stubborn stains, we recommend using isopropyl alcohol. Make sure you don’t pour any liquids directly on the keyboard, though. Instead, apply some on a cleaning cloth and use that to wipe the board. This ensures no liquid enters the internals, which could potentially damage the PCB. Do check the keyboard feet for any grime or dust buildup and give the cable a quick look to ensure there’s no damage.

Enthusiasts with prior experience in building mechanical keyboards can further dismantle the board for a thorough cleanup, but it’s not a necessity. Much of the dust and debris stays on top of the keyboard deck, so you can avoid this. We DO NOT recommend dismantling the keyboard if you’re not familiar with the process.

Gateron red mechanical switches

Once you think you’ve done enough, you can drop the keycaps back on the switches. Keep a damp cloth handy and clean each keycap before placing it on the board to remove any remaining dust or grime. Ensure everything is completely dry and in place before plugging the keyboard to your PC.