Guide: How to clean wooden floors
If you have a wooden floor, you may be familiar with how difficult it can be to get that desired shine. Often, this is down to different types of wooden floors needing difficult cleaning and products for the best effect.
Here’s our guide on how to clean different wooden floor types.
1. The first step is to ensure you have removed all bits, dust and debris for the floor first. This can be done be either vacuuming or sweeping depending on your preference. I prefer vacuuming as the bristles on some mops can be harsh and scratch the surfaces of the wood or the varnish,
2. What type of wood floor do you have? Is it laminate? Hardwood? Unfinished? Stained? Understanding this will have an impact on what you need to clean it. For example, a laminate can withstand some stronger cleaning products than say, a waxed hardwood floor.
3. Choose the right product for the job. Different cleaners are designed to do different things. Soaps and detergents are water based alkaline cleaners and are excellent at removing dirt and stains, however they can be abrasive and will more often that dull any finishes or varnishes over time so ideally, should be avoided. Specifically designed wooden floor cleaners typically are pH-neutral and a little more gentle so are more suited for finished hardwood floors.
As a tip – do not use furniture spray. This is a common mistake as it is considered that being the same material (e.g wood) this is the best, which seems logical, however furniture sprays leave a residue. These residues not only make the floor incredibly slippy and potentially very dangerous, but the chemicals can mixed with waves floors and damage them.
4. Never use bleach. Though for the bacteria hating among us this may seem tempting, this will only do damage to the floor. It is too abrasive.
5. Dry when complete. This does seem like an arduous added step, but drying the floor after will avoid streaks and strangs and keeping it in the best condition long term. Use as little water as possible and follow by buffing with a duster for that perfect, squeaky clean shine!
