Hardwood Floor Cleaning Tips

Maintaining your hardwood floors the easy way

Here's a set of Essentials For Clean Living™ tips.  

Taking care of your hardwood floors can be pretty easy if you practice some simple preventative measures and use the right products.  Please read these important tips so you can make – or keep – your hardwood floors looking great.  

Brookstone mat

One of the best things you can do is have a sturdy floor mat just inside all of your outside doors.  This catches the grit and other particles that do the most damage to your polyurethane finish.  In case you’re wondering if your floors have a polyurethane finish, the answer is YES.  Whether it’s oak, pine, cherry, bamboo, ‘engineered’ or laminate, they all have some type of urethane finish.  The only exception is if your flooring installer said to use tung oil or some other ‘wipe on’ oil-based product and that would be extremely rare.

Miele canister

The next tip is our favorite – vacuuming your floors regularly.  Yes, you can sweep or use a dust mop but they will always leave some abrasive particles behind.  When you walk on it, that could grind those small particles into the finish and dull it making it look ‘scuffed’.  If you take your shoes off as you enter the door – great! – but your body weight can still do damage the same way as shoes just not as quickly.  

Lastly, get liquids up immediately to prevent moisture damage to the floor.  We have new dog that drips large amounts of water out of his mouth after he drinks from the water bowl.  My wife, son and I are now trained to have the microfiber mop close by to immediately wipe up the puddles he creates. Perhaps you have a similar situation!

So what’s the best way to maintain them after you’ve gotten the dirt and pet hair off the floor? 

 You’re probably aware we sell the Bona brand and you may have been using it for years.  We have the cleaners for hardwood and stone/tile floors as well as the Refresher product for restoring the finish to a brand new look.  We’re glad to offer our expertise to your floor care questions.

We recommend that you not use the Bona Hardwood Polish.  It cannot be removed unless you buy the ‘remover’ that is sold only on Bona’s website.  It’s trying to be a shortcut product to the Refresher but it’s not necessary if your hardwood finish is already in good shape.