How to Replace a Cooker Hood Filter

If you notice that your cooker hood isn't working correctly, it isn't properly extracting smoke and smells or grease is building up around the filters, you'll likely need to replace the filters. In this article, we'll run you through how to clean and replace your cooker hood filters step by step so you can get your cooker hood back up to scratch.

It's worth noting that there are two different kinds of cooker hoods; recirculation and vented. A recirculation hood cleans dirty air before returning it back into your kitchen. A vented cooker hood simply takes the grease and fumes and extracts them outside of your home. As these two different types of cooker hoods have different filters, we will cover both in this guide.

Remember, always make sure your appliance is switched off and disconnected from the mains (if applicable) before carrying out any work.

Let's get started! To learn how to clean and replace your cooker hood filters, simply watch the video or read our step by step guide below.

You'll need to open your cooker hood to access the filters. Many cooker hoods are different, but they are usually very simple to open up. You may need to unscrew a couple of screws to remove the cover panel.

Now that your cooker hood is open, you will need to clean or replace the filters. First, there's the grease filter, which will be attached to the panel you removed and can generally be found in both recirculation and vented cooker hoods. When this filter becomes too saturated with grease, it will simply need to be replaced with a new one. The grease filter should be replaced every three to six months, depending on when it becomes discoloured and saturated.

Your cooker hood may also have a metal mesh filter. If your cooker hood has one of these filters, it will likely be on the cover panel you removed to open your cooker hood. This filter doesn't need to be replaced, but simply scrubbed clean instead. This should generally be done around once every three to four months.

Finally, if you have a recirculation cooker hood, it will also have a carbon filter. This can be found inside the cooker hood and will also need to be replaced to keep your cooker hood working properly. For reference, a carbon filter should be changed around once every four months.

That's all there is to cleaning and replacing your cooker hood filters! Your cooker hood should now be doing its job properly once again.

While you're here, why not also learn how to keep your cooker itself working properly too? Head over to our article on how to diagnose problems with your oven so you can make sure yours is up to scratch and working at 100%.

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