can anyone tell me what causes brown spots on my stainless steel cutlery in the dishwasher? Can anybody tell me why this is happening and how I can prevent it? This is a natural chemical reaction and does not mean that your appliance is faulty. It doesn't happen to spoons or forks. Dish washers are notorious for “Floating rust”, which is caused by rust in a dishwasher which “floats” around during the wash cycle and lands on object in the dishwasher creating brown spots and rust spots. I use the Electrolux cleaner powder bought from espares and others. I have recently started using a dishwasher to clean my cutlery and crockery. It seemed a little “over-kill” to me, but the point was to hand wash them. We live in a very, very soft water area (one of the softest water areas in the UK) so don't know why I added salt. I have noticed a problem though. Perhaps you have put your knife in the dishwasher and somehow it has come out with a rust stain on it that won’t budge. 8. When you know that a drop of water is required to move the rust of the pit to the place around it and that takes a long time, it is a highly unlikely story. Alton Brown did a show once and demonstrated how to wash your good knives. I've cleaned the dishwasher regularly with those liquid products on a hot programme. It can't have anything to do with the quality of the cutlery because they are very high standard. DH habitually makes himself a peanut butter sandwich and sticks the knife in the dishwasher still covered in globs of peanut butter. Knives Stainless-steel knives are more prone to corroding than stainless-steel forks or spoons. We have had a dishwasher for years and NEVER used salt. When there is rust in a dishwasher, it “floats” around during the washing cycle. It hasn't helped. 2) if you have never run a cleaning cycle with dishwasher/washing machine cleaner then you could have a build up of gunk in the pipework. It is strange that people who complain about pit corrosion never place their knives in the dishwasher and always clean, dry and store their knives after use. I ran an empty load just to make sure the inside was clean and then I filled it with dishes and ran it again. the spots almost look like rust spots and are hard to remove, I … Contact a plumber and ask them to check the water supply to the dishwasher. On the advice of a friend I bought a dishwasher cleaner and ran it through. My dishwasher puts brown spots, like rust, on any knives put in it. After this rust spots started appearing on cutlery straight away. The corrosive dishwasher powder then eats away at the exposed rusty wire, leaving spots - particularly depositing on knives and spoons. It’s better for them. Whenever cutlery has been through the dishwasher, it comes out in brown spots. I thought the problem was my old dishwasher (20 yrs old) but now have new one with same problem. This can cause brown spots on porcelain, which resemble rust. Rust spots on cutlery from dishwasher Metals can begin to rust when they come into contact with oxygen or water. My knives have developed these brown crusty spots on them. I did another load and the dishes seemed fine. Floating rust can can settle anywhere in the dishwasher. I switched to the Seventh Generation dishwashing detergent for awhile and switched back to Cascade, thinking that was the problem. Then one day, for some reason still unbeknown to me I decided to put salt in the dishwasher. My cutlery is stainless steel. When I run my dishwasher all my dishes come out with sticky brown spots all over the dishes! Hence the name “floating rust”. The SAME thing happened.