Those brown freckles on your stainless steel have a name

I got called out to a fridge in Shell Cove that wasn't broken.

The customer had noticed a fine brown speckling across the stainless door, mostly along the bottom third and around the handle mounts. Two-year-old fridge. She was convinced something had gone wrong with the finish and wanted to know whether it was a warranty job.

It wasn't a fault, and I told her so before I'd been there ten minutes, which is not a great business model but it's how I'd want to be treated.

It's called tea staining

That brown freckling has a proper name in Australia, and it's a well-documented thing rather than a mystery. Stainless steel doesn't rust the way ordinary steel does, but it isn't immune either. It relies on a very thin chromium oxide layer to protect itself, and chloride is what attacks that layer.

We live in chloride. Salt spray carries a long way off the surf, it settles on everything, and it stays there until something washes it off. The Australian Stainless Steel Development Association has a clear explainer on why coastal buildings get tea staining and how to prevent it, and everything in it applies just as well to an appliance door as it does to a balustrade.

The short version is that it's a surface discolouration. It looks like rust and people reasonably assume the steel is going. It usually isn't.

Why appliances get it worse than the balustrade does

Two reasons, and neither of them is the appliance's fault.

The first is grade. Marine-grade stainless (316) holds up far better near salt water than the 304 grade used on most domestic appliances, but 304 is what appliance manufacturers use, because it's what the price point supports and because most of the country isn't within earshot of the surf. That's a design decision made for a national market, not for Shellharbour village.

The second is that appliances live indoors, which sounds protective and isn't. Outdoor stainless in the weather gets rain-washed. Salt lands on it, and then it rains, and the salt goes away. Your kitchen doesn't rain. Salt comes in through open windows and doors, lands on the fridge, and sits there until you wipe it, which for most of us means the bottom half of the door never gets touched at all.

That's why the freckling almost always starts low, and near handles, hinges and screw heads where the finish has been worked.

Cleaning it off

Warm water, a bit of dishwashing liquid, a soft cloth, and go with the grain of the brushed finish rather than across it. Rinse it with clean water and dry it, because leaving it wet is half the problem.

If that doesn't shift it, a proprietary stainless steel cleaner will, and it's worth buying the real thing rather than improvising.

What to keep away from it: steel wool, scouring pads, anything with chlorine or bleach in it, and any cleaner sold as a mould killer. Bleach on stainless near the coast is pouring chloride onto the exact problem you're trying to fix. I've seen a rangehood canopy properly ruined by someone attacking tea staining with a bathroom spray.

Once it's clean, the maintenance is a wipe-down every few weeks. Sounds tedious. It takes about ninety seconds and it's the entire difference between a fridge that looks new at eight years and one that looks rough at three.

When it's not cosmetic

Tea staining is a finish problem. What follows is a different thing, and this is the part worth actually looking for.

Pitting is the first real sign. If you run a fingernail over a spot and it catches in a small crater rather than sliding over a stain, the steel itself has been penetrated. That doesn't spread fast on a door panel, but on a thin pressed component it matters.

Fasteners are next. Screws, brackets and hinge pins are often a different alloy from the panel they hold, and they corrode much faster. An oven door that has started to sag, or a rangehood that's come loose from the underside of the cupboard, is usually a fastener problem rather than a panel problem, and it's a repair.

And then there's extraction gear, which cops it from both directions. I've written separately about why rangehoods die first in a beachside kitchen, and the corrosion side of that story starts on the outside of the canopy exactly like this, then works inward until the brackets stop being brackets.

Inside a fridge, corrosion on the condenser is a whole separate story and a much more common cause of an actual fault. That one I've covered in why fridges near the water run constantly.

The warranty question

This is the bit people want answered, so: I don't decide manufacturers' warranty claims and I'm not an authorised agent for any brand. What I can tell you is that cosmetic corrosion on an external panel is commonly excluded, and the manuals usually say so somewhere in the care section, so it's worth reading yours before you get your hopes up.

The consumer guarantees that come with anything you buy in Australia are a separate thing again, and they don't run on the manufacturer's clock. The ACCC sets out how those guarantees work better than I can.

What I'd actually do

If it's freckling, clean it and set yourself a reminder. Don't spend money on it.

If it's pitted, or something has come loose, or a door has dropped, that's a job. The assessment fee is $125, payable on the visit, and you get the repair price before any work starts. We do domestic appliances only — get in touch or ring 02 4229 3777 and I'll tell you on the phone which of the two you've got.