How to Clean a Hardwood Floor

Cleaning your wood floor is probably the single most important part of maintaining your wood floor. By keeping your floor properly cleaned it will keep your floor looking great, long lasting for years to come and extend the investment you put into them upfront.

The first step in cleaning is understanding why we are cleaning. You could have the same finish and same hardwood in two different houses and one might look brand new after 5 years and the other is already needing to be re-coated. The reason lies in the cleanliness of the floor over the length of its life.

Every piece of dirt & debris is like a little piece of sand paper. Those little pieces of debris wear the finish faster than anything else. That means the less debris on the floor while walking on it the longer the finish (no matter if oil, water or even U.V.) will last.

The first step of cleaning each and every time is to get as much off the floor as possible before the next steps. By getting everything off the floor prior using anything wet allows for no mud to be created and left on the edges of the floor. Anything on the floor once hit with any kind of spray creates a “mud”. Mud is bad, it is hard to move around and effectively get off the floor. It is much more effective to get dirt off in a dry application prior to dirt and debris becoming mud.

Once the first step is done and 95% of the debris is off the floor we can ebgin with the wet cleaning. This is the step most people start on and that is the problem, they are not getting the dirt off the floor, they are just pushing “mud” around.

• You want to get your micro-fiber and spray it once or twice.
• Then spray a 10×10 area with 1-2 sprays max.
• Move your micro-fiber mop in a C turn at the end of each run to ensure no dust comes off the mop.
• Spray a max of 1 spray for every 100 feet. The spray is to just pickup any remaining dust.
• If you need to spot treat a specific place use a microfiber towel and rub it gently.
• Once you are done if you are using AMAX Cleaner your floor should be dry within a matter of minutes and have no residue left on the floor.

If you are seeing streaks on your floor you need to get more of the dust off next time or you can have use professionally wash/clean your hardwood floors.