Maintenance of Your Hardwood Floor

You will be able to preserve and enjoy your hardwood floor for decades if it is maintained properly.  With proper maintenance, you may never need to sand, varnish, polish or wax your hardwood floor.  This article has some maintenance advice on how to keep your hardwood floor aging gracefully, or from not aging at all.

Protect Your Investment

Humidity and moisture are not a floor's best friend.  Although some expansion and contraction does occur, you can repel any severe moisture related problems by keeping your indoor humidity level between 40% and 60% throughout the year. 

Avoid cleaning it with a damp mop whenever possible.  You want as little moisture as possible. There are many finishes that can protect your floor.

Avoid letting dark, gritty substances come into contact with your hardwood floor.  Dirt and sand, and of course oil and asphalt, will wear at the floor's appearance.  Carpeted or vinyl-back doormats at your doors can help prevent the unwanted substances from being tracked in.

Help your floor avoid sharp objects.  Chairs and furniture should have soft rubber wheels or be on top of floor protectors. 

How Should You Clean Your Floor?

The first time you clean your floor, you want to use a soft brush or a vacuum with a soft brush to remove all the dirt and dust.  Then you will want to clean the floor with a dry dust cloth twice, replacing the dust cloth at each cleaning.   A cleaner made specifically for wood floors should then be used to remove any stubborn dirt. A slightly damp cloth can be used for the final cleanup.

Daily cleaning of a hardwood floor should always be dry cleaning.  Use a soft brush on a vacuum or a dry electrostatic dust cloth to remove dirt and dust.   Then use the recommended floor cleaner in long strokes using an overlapping zigzag manner which follows the length of the floor panels.

If your floor undergoes intensive use (pets, children, entertaining), you will need to do a cleaning with a damp cloth.  Avoid using anything wet whenever possible as it will hasten the floors aging process.  Use a damp cloth following the panel length while wiping in a zigzag motion.  Try to apply as little pressure as possible – just what you need to get the soil off.   Immediately afterwards, use a clean cotton towel to remove any wet residue.

The Tougher Stains: 

Most daily living stains can be easily removed from a hardwood floor. Dirt, pencil or crayon marks, and rubber or shoe scruffs can be wiped away with a dust cloth.   

If beverages of milk, beer, wine, tea or soft drinks unexpectedly meet your floor, or any potentially staining fruit or berries get to the floor before they make it to your mouth or your recipe, make sure you wipe up the mess immediately with an absorbent cloth.  If the stain has begun setting, use a damp cloth, but make sure that you rub the floor dry immediately afterwards. 

Blood and urine should be removed with a damp cloth as soon as possible. The floor should then be cleaned of any remaining dirt that could still hold the staining properties of the blood and urine, and a laminate cleaner should then be used.

Being beautiful means being careful, but accidents happen.  Stubborn makeup, nail polish and shoe polish can be removed with a drop of acetone on a clean cloth.  Concentrate the acetone on the stain.  Do not rub it onto the whole floor.  The acetone will work for varnish, ink and pen as well.  Avoid cleaners such as “white spirit.”   These cleaners are greasy and full of chemicals harmful to your wood floor.

It's a sad loss when chocolate falls to the floor, but cleaning it with a laminate cleaner will keep the floor clean.  A laminate cleaner will work for spilled fat and oil as well.

Wood floor care is very easy.  Your primary concerns are to avoid moisture and wipe up spills and staining materials immediately.  Following those two golden rules will keep your hardwood floor looking younger every day.