Wood Floor Care and Maintenance Tips

Cleaning and maintaining beautiful new wood floors can seem daunting, especially with misleading floor cleaners available on the market. It’s important to keep them looking their best, so we have some wood floor care and maintenance tips to share based on our over 20 year experience.

Clean Up Spills on a Wood Floor Right Away

While this may be self-explanatory, don’t let any spills sit on your floors. It’s best to wipe up spills and messes as soon as they occur to avoid water marks, stains, mold, etc. Cleaning spills up immediately also helps to prevent the warping of your wood planks. Check out what happens when you don’t wipe it up immediately.

Use Furniture Pads

Regular usage and moving furniture around can scuff up your floors’ finish. This can make your hardwood appear dull; constant scooting of chairs, for example, wears down on the coating. When you apply furniture pads to pieces like chairs, tables, couches, etc., especially when moving furniture helps avoid these scuffs. Here’s the one’s we recommend that you use!

Remove Dust Regularly

It’s best to avoid wet mopping your floors to decrease the risk of mold growth, board warping, and more. But then, how should you clean your hardwood? Merry Maids recommend using a dust-mop or vacuum to remove debris, dirt, dust, and grime that builds up on your floors. This can help leave a fresher look in your day-to-day life. You can typically sweep/dust once every week or two to avoid these contaminants building up.

Use the Right Cleaning Products

With hundreds of wood floor-targeted cleaning products on the market, it can be hard to pick the right one! First, we highly advise you to avoid oil soap products as these can leave a thick, waxy residue that dulls your floors over time.
Secondly, we recommend you don’t wet mop the floor. As we mentioned, this can lead to mold growth, warping panels, and watermarks. Instead, we encourage you to try out the Swiffer Wet Jet System. This product sprays a cleaning solution directly in front of the Swiffer disposable cleaning pad to wipe away dirt, residue, grime, and stickiness without oversaturating the floors. 

Maintain a Regular Floor Cleaning Schedule

Recoating your floors every few years helps keep them looking lively. With our one-day Clean ReCoat Process, we can have your floors looking amazing; they will shine like never before! In between recoats, it’s also a good idea to have the floors deep-cleaned. We offer a cleaning-only service as well as our Clean ReCoat Process to keep your floors decontaminated in-between full servicing. However, if you want to keep up that glamorous shine, it’s best to recoat every 3-5 years.
We want your floors to look their best. Routine cleaning and maintenance can help retain the shine of your coating for extended periods. But of course, the finish will naturally wear down over time, especially in high-traffic areas of your home. So when you reach that point, let us know! We are excited to help give your floors the boost they need.