What Causes Gray Marks on White Porcelain Dishes?

Making a Mark

• The marks left behind on your dinnerware are often a light, silvery gray, but they may also be more like black. The gray tinged marks give a hint about what put them there — silverware. The simple act of cutting your food or even rubbing the plate with a spoon or fork leaves a metal deposit on the plate. The metal deposit is thin enough not to harm the utensil, though it does sully plate appearance. This type of damage to your dinnerware is reversible, however, and does not mean that the dishes are ruined for life.

Eliminating Gray Marks

• Getting rid of those marks is straightforward. Mildly abrasive cleaning products formulated for dishes are available commercially and are often labeled specifically for mark removal. These products are helpful but not necessary, as you can create your own mark-eliminating cleaner at home using equal parts of baking soda and water. Combine these ingredients to make a paste and then apply the paste to your dishes using a sponge. Gently scrub away the metal deposits and rinse dishes clean afterward. A dab of silver polish applied with a cloth is another effective treatment.

Prevention

• While there may not be much you can do about using cutlery on your dishes, preventing gray marks may be as simple as properly loading your dishwasher or being careful with dishes in the sink. Cutlery in the dishwasher may get jostled around and bump into nearby dinnerware, leaving behind those characteristic gray marks. This also occurs in sink washing when plates bump around in the same basin as cutlery. Avoid this problem by keeping dishes well away from cutlery when loading the dishwasher and by washing dishes and silverware separately in the sink.

Scratches and Other Damage

• Gray or black markings left behind on plates are not classified as scratches, as they rarely leave an indentation on the surface of the dish. A true scratch leaves an indentation in the dish's surface that you can feel with your finger. Some scratches are actually chips in progress, a hairline fracture that develops into a true chip over time. Dishes exposed to very high temperatures may also become rough or visibly distorted on their surface. Unlike utensil marks, these types of damage are often irreparable and could mean the dish needs to be replaced.