Wood floors are a beautiful highlight to any home. They offer a strong, natural look that improves the style of any space and lifts the value. Plus, hardwood floors are relatively easy to clean. Being a natural product, there is a need to properly maintain wood flooring to ensure it keeps its strength and finish for a long time. Find out below how to best maintain your wood flooring.

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While daily is ideal, vacuuming once or twice a week will do the job well enough. However, if you can manage it, it’s worth sweeping every day or second day, especially if you have pets. Pet hair is likely to discreetly cover your flooring and cause scratching over time, plus it can clog the spaces between floorboards. It’s important to keep your flooring dust free as the dust will dull the finish on your floorboards. Use a brush head on your vacuum and follow it up with a good mop or steam clean, with a quality steam cleaner by Bissell. Steam cleaning your flooring will leave it squeaky clean and there won’t be the danger of leaving your floorboards damp, as can happen with overzealous mopping.

 

 

No matter what your family is like, whether you have children or not, it’s almost impossible to avoid scuffing or staining your flooring at some point. To take care of any minor scuffs or stains, clean the area with a wood cleaner and then, if you have oiled flooring, apply a thin coat of oil to the affected area. Remove any excess oil with a soft cloth and allow it to stand for a day. For major damage to your flooring you may need to sand back your floorboards and oil them, or refinish varnished flooring.

 

 

Once a month, or bimonthly, take to your flooring with a dedicated hardwood floor cleaner. Use a damp flat mop with a microfiber head (or wrap your mop with a microfiber cloth) and give your flooring a once over using the minimum amount of wood cleaner recommended – you don’t want to damage your flooring by over saturating it with cleaner and damaging its finish.

 

 

A lot of hardwood floors have a polyurethane surface finish to seal and protect the flooring and to give it a glossy finish. Polishing your flooring every 3 or 4 months with a buffing pad will refresh the lustre of your flooring and return, or renew, its glossy shine.

 

Above are a number of ways to look after your hardwood flooring. While most cleaning and maintenance procedures are similar, it’s not a one size fits all approach. You need to know what type of flooring you have, what finish it has, and what are the specific care instructions for your flooring. This all needs to come from the manufacturer, or if you’ve inherited wood flooring with a new house purchase, it can be worth having an expert come out and give you a run down on proper care and maintenance procedures. Either that, or you can take photographs and ask someone at your local store. The bottom line is, it’s worth your while knowing exactly how to care for your flooring.

 

The most effective way to clean and maintain your wood flooring is to have a regular cleaning schedule. This way you are able to keep your floors dust-free and avoid any unnecessary scratches from particles gathering on the surface of your floors and getting trapped in the cracks.