The question every single violin teacher should answer and teach is “How do I clean my violin?” And sadly, many don’t. Many violin students go through their entire life, not having learned how to clean their violins or bows.

Violin teachers are often eager at teaching students how to play that they forget and neglect the important question of how to clean your violin. In this page, I hope to answer your questions on how to clean your violin.

The first thing you will need to clean your violin with is a violin cleaning cloth. It’s important that you have several of these cloths and not just one cloth. One cleaning cloth is not enough, nor is any cleaning cloth Ok. You need a special violin cleaning cloth or instrument cloth. These can be obtained from a music store. The violin cleaning cloths are made from soft fabric as to not scratch and damage your violin.

The second thing you will need is a little bit of violin cleaning oil or just called violin oil. And the third….. that’s right. Rubbing alcohol with a 70% concentration.

Now how do I actually clean my violin? You have given me information on all the things I need, but not actually how to get into cleaning my violin. That’s all coming in the next paragraph below.

When a violin is played, the rosin from the bow leaves off a tiny bit of white residue. This residue needs to be wiped off the violin. Take your first cloth and around the bridge and fingerboard, just gently rub off any white residue you may see. This is usually enough, unless you have been lazy and not paid attention to clean your violin the way that it should be done. If that’s you, read further.

The residue if not cleaned, can cake onto the violin. This means that it gets sticky and hard and pacts on to the actual varnish of the violin. This can damage the violin. Therefore, if this has happened to you, take your second cloth and just drop about 3 drops of violin cleaning solution onto the cloth. Gently rub and massage it in a circular motion around the area where the rosin has collected.

You can also use your third cloth and clean your strings, fingerboard and chin rest with about 3 drops of 70% rubbing alcohol. Take heed though that you do not touch the varnish of the violin and that no drops of alcohol drop onto the varnish.

I hope this has been helpful and informative on how to clean your violin and that your question on How do I clean my violin has been answered. You can check out my YouTube channel for more videos and information on how to clean your violin.