Caring for Your Piano Between Tunings

Tuning keeps your piano sounding right, but what you do the rest of the year decides how long that tuning lasts — and how well the instrument ages. None of it is complicated.

Place it thoughtfully

The single biggest favour you can do a piano is to put it somewhere with stable conditions. Keep it away from heating and cooling vents, radiators, fireplaces, and direct sunlight, and prefer an interior wall over one that backs onto the outdoors. Big temperature and humidity swings are what knock a piano out of tune.

Steady the humidity

Aim for relatively stable indoor humidity, around 40–45%. In a dry, heated Toronto winter a humidifier helps; in a muggy summer, a dehumidifier or air conditioning does. Sudden swings are harder on a piano than any single level.

Clean it gently

• Keys: wipe with a soft, slightly damp cloth, then dry. Avoid soaking them and harsh cleaners.
• Cabinet: a soft dry or barely-damp cloth. Skip the furniture spray.
• Inside: leave it to the technician — the action and strings are delicate.
• Keep drinks off the piano. A spill into the action is a genuinely expensive accident.

Play it

Regular, normal playing is good for a piano. You won't knock it out of tune by playing — that's the weather's job — and a played piano stays in better working order than a silent one.

Keep to a tuning schedule

Finally, the best between-tunings habit is simply not letting too much time pass between them. An annual tuning keeps the drift small and prevents the bigger, costlier pitch corrections that build up when a piano is neglected for years.