Hardwood floors are beautiful, durable, and classic. For the most part, they’re pretty easy to keep clean, too. You can usually just sweep or vacuum them and maybe run a spray mop over them for good measure. But your hardwood floors go through a lot, especially if you have kids, pets, or both. Foot traffic, spills, dropped gum, shed fur — it all adds up, and despite regular sweeping, your hardwood floors do need a deep clean once in a while.
Deep cleaning your hardwood floors requires a cleaner that’s suited to your type of floor finish. You need to use the right technique, too. And you might not be able to clean up all the grime and stains with just a mop — you might need to roll up your sleeves and tackle stains with specialised tools.
Sweep or Vacuum Up Loose Debris
The first step in deep cleaning your hardwood floors is to sweep or vacuum up the loose dust and debris. A canister vacuum with a hardwood floor attachment is best, but you can also use a robot vacuum or stick vacuum. A large, upright vacuum could scratch your floor.
You can also use a dust mop or a split-tip broom. Split-tip brooms have fine bristles that will pick up more dust, and they’re less likely to scratch up your floor than regular brooms.
Determine Your Floor’s Finish
Before you can really get into deep cleaning your hardwood floors, you need to know what kind of finish you’re dealing with, because that will determine what kind of hardwood floor cleaner you’ll need to use. While there are many kinds of hardwood floor finishes, they’re all either surface finishes or penetrating finishes.
Penetrating finishes, or oil finishes, soak into the floor, oxidizing it and hardening it from the inside out. Floors finished in this way usually need to be waxed regularly to maintain their finish, and they’re prone to water damage. However, these finishes were mostly used in older homes built before the 1920s. If your hardwood floors are newer, or have been refinished recently, they probably have a surface finish.
Surface finishes are applied to the top of a hardwood floor to create a glossy, protective surface layer. They’re much more durable than penetrating finishes and much easier to maintain. They include oil- and water-based urethanes, moisture-cured urethanes, and polyurethane. They prevent liquids from soaking into the floor, so they can protect your hardwood from water damage.
There are two methods to help you figure out which type of floor finish you have. You can pour a little water on your floor and wait to see if it pools on the surface or soaks in. If it pools, you have a surface finish. If it soaks in, you have a penetrating finish.
Alternatively, you can try scraping a small area of the floor with a dull knife. If you’re able to scrape up a clear material from the surface, you have a surface finish. If the floor just smudges, but no material comes up, you have a penetrating finish.
Choose the Right Hardwood Floor Cleaner
Once you know what kind of finish you’re dealing with, you can choose a hardwood floor cleaner suited to it. You can use water-based cleaners on floors with surface finishes, but you should avoid using mixtures with lemon juice, vinegar, or tea bags since they can break down the finish on your hardwood floors over time. If your floors have a penetrating finish, you’re going to need to use an oil-based cleaner designed for hardwood floors.
Mop Your Hardwood Floors
If you’re just learning how to clean hardwood floors, you should know that the technique really matters. Remember that applying too much water to your floor can damage it, even if it has a protective surface finish. That’s why it’s a good idea to either spray the floor down with your chosen hardwood floor cleaner, or, if you use the mop and bucket method, wring the mop out really, really well before you apply it to your floors. You only need to lightly mist your hardwood floors with the right cleaner.
Make sure you mop in the direction of the floorboards. This allows your mop’s fibers to get into the cracks between floorboards to really get up any dirt, dust, and grime that’s stuck down there. It also prevents streaking.
Tackle Difficult Stains
Mopping with hardwood floor cleaner might not remove all the scuff marks, stains, dropped gum or spilled paint on your floors. Scuff marks can be cleaned with a pencil eraser, tennis ball, or melamine sponge. You can use dish soap and water to clean up oil or grease stains; if it’s a really stubborn stain, put a clean cloth over it and apply a hot iron for about a minute to lift it out.
There’s one, and only one, occasion when it’s okay to put vinegar on your hardwood floors — and that’s removing pet stains. Use a vinegar and water solution, but never use a solution that’s more than 25 percent vinegar. After you dry the area, cover it with baking soda and let it sit for a few hours to absorb the smell.
Paint stains can be rubbed off with a damp cloth or with rubbing alcohol. Water stains can often be removed with the hot iron trick, just like grease stains, or you can rub some mineral oil into the floor to lift the water out. Oil will also remove chewing gum, or you can try freezing it off with ice. Use a microfiber cloth and Goo Gone to clean up sticky messes. Wax can be gently scraped away with a plastic spatula — try softening it with a hairdryer or a hot iron as necessary. Remember to place a cloth between your floor and the iron.
With the right care, your hardwood floors can last a lifetime — and look good while doing it. Take care of your hardwood floors, and they’ll take care of you.
