We get called out to floors that are only five or six years old and already looking tired. And nearly every time, the owner has been cleaning it regularly. That is the bit people find hard to hear, because the cleaning routine is usually part of the problem.
Mopping is fine, it is just only doing half the job
We are not telling you to stop mopping. A mop is good for one thing, which is lifting marks off the top of your floor. Spilled tea, muddy paw prints, the ring under the bin. For that, it does the job.
What it is not doing is getting the grit out.
A damp mop head slides over the top of the floor. It picks up some of what is loose and it pushes the rest about. The fine stuff gets dragged down into the low bits: the grain, the brushed texture, the bevels between your boards, and all the wee scratches that every floor picks up in its first year.
Once it is down in there, a mop cannot reach it. You could mop that floor every week for ten years and it will still be sitting there.
The grit is what is actually wearing your floor out
Think about what comes into your house on your feet. Dust off the street, grit off the pavement in the winter, sand if you have been out at Portobello, and whatever has come up the stair with you if you are in a tenement.
That grit is harder than the lacquer or the oil on your floor. So every time somebody walks across that room, that grit is being pressed and twisted into your finish. You are essentially walking on sandpaper.
That is what wears a floor out. Not the walking. The grit.
Why the worn bits never come clean
This is the bit that catches people out. You get a grey lane down your hall, or a dull patch in front of the sink, and you scrub at it and it never comes up.
That is because it is not dirt. That is your finish worn away. No amount of cleaning is bringing that back, because there is nothing left there to clean.
The other problem is water
A wet mop puts far more water on your floor than most people realise, and then it just leaves it there to dry off.
On timber or laminate, that water goes straight for the joints and the bevels, which is exactly where your board has the least protection. Timber will swell. Laminate will swell too, and laminate does not come back down again. Once you have got a puffed up edge on a laminate board, that is it, that is permanent.
Steam mops are worse. Heat and water forced into a joint under pressure is about the most damaging thing you can do to a floating floor, whatever it says on the box about being safe for sealed floors.
Then you have got the residue. Most of the cleaners you get in the supermarket have got a gloss agent or a soap in them to make the floor look shiny straight after. None of that rinses off. It just builds up, it grabs more dirt, and eventually the floor goes cloudy and feels a bit tacky underfoot. So people clean it more, which puts more residue down. We see that constantly on LVT.
So what does a deep clean actually do
The point of a deep clean is not that it scrubs harder than you do. The point is that it takes away what it loosens, and it does it without leaving your floor wet.
We use a professional scrubber-extractor, with two brushes that turn against each other. It puts the solution down, works it in, and sucks it back up in the one pass. Your floor is walk-on dry within minutes, because the water is never sitting on it.
This is the process we follow every time.
- We look at the floor first. What type it is, what the finish is, what condition it is in. An oiled floor, a lacquered floor and an LVT wear layer all want something different. Getting that wrong is how people damage floors.
- Then a proper vacuum. All the loose grit comes off before any moisture goes anywhere near it. Skip that and you just turn the grit into a slurry and drag it about.
- Then the machine goes over it. The two brushes work the solution down into the grain, the texture and the bevels. Because they turn against each other the machine tracks straight instead of pulling off to one side.
- The dirty water comes straight back up. That is the bit a mop and a bucket cannot do, because a bucket is just putting the dirt back on the floor.
- Then we finish the edges and tell you what it needs next. Sometimes that is a maintenance coat, sometimes a refresher, and quite often it is nothing at all for another year.
What you are left with is a floor with the dirt actually gone out of it, no residue on top, and a finish that has got years left in it instead of months.
What you should still be doing yourself
None of this means you stop looking after it. Day to day, this is what matters and it costs you nothing.
- Dry dust more than you mop. A microfibre dust mop, two or three times a week in a busy house. This is the single most useful thing you can do, because you are getting the grit up before it gets walked in.
- Get proper matting at your door. Not a wee decorative one. You want enough length that somebody takes two or three steps on it. In a tenement that means inside your own door, because the close is where the grit is.
- Damp mop, do not wet mop. A well wrung out flat mop and a pH neutral cleaner. If you can see wet behind you as you go, that is too much water.
- Bin the multi-surface spray and the steam mop. Anything with a gloss agent in it, anything harsh, anything that steams.
Do that and once a year from us is genuinely all most houses need. There is more on the day to day side in our guide to cleaning engineered wood floors without ruining them.
When cleaning is not the answer
We would rather tell you this before you book than after.
A deep clean lifts dirt and residue out. It does not take scratches away, it does not bring back a finish that has already worn through, and it will not fix water damage or a swollen laminate edge.
If that grey lane in your hall is worn lacquer rather than dirt, cleaning it will make it a cleaner worn lacquer. That is all. At that point an engineered or solid timber floor wants sanding and recoating, and a laminate or LVT floor that has gone through its wear layer needs replaced in that area. We will tell you which one you are looking at when we come and see it.
How often should you get it done
- Normal house, normal traffic: once every 12 months.
- Busy family house, kids, dogs, back door going all day: every 6 months.
- Commercial, retail, hospitality, HMO: every 3 to 6 months.
The signs it is due are dull patches, grey walkways, grit you can feel under your feet, a finish that feels slightly sticky, or a floor that just never looks properly clean after you have cleaned it.
One other thing worth knowing. Most manufacturers want to see evidence of correct maintenance to keep a wear layer warranty valid, so it is worth keeping a note of when it was last done.
Common questions
Will it make my floor shiny again?
It brings back the sheen the floor already has, by taking off the residue and the dirt that were dulling it down. It is not adding gloss that was never there. If you want more shine than the floor came with, that is a recoating job, not a cleaning job.
Is it safe on laminate and LVT, or is it just for wood?
It is safe on all three. That is because of the extraction. The floor never gets saturated, so there is no water sitting on your joints. We match the solution to the floor type.
How long before we can walk on it?
Minutes, not hours. The water is coming straight back up as it goes down. A typical three bedroom flat is a few hours start to finish.
Could I not just hire a machine and do it myself?
You could, but the risk is not really the machine, it is knowing what you are looking at. Wrong solution on an oiled floor, or too much water on laminate, and you have got a bill far bigger than the clean would have been. If you are going to have a go, at least find out what finish you have got first.
Related questions
A deep clean costs a fraction of what sanding, recoating or replacing a floor costs, and it is the cheapest thing you can do to look after one. Get a free quote or give us a ring on 0131 285 6435.
We look after floors across Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian.
