Wood floor maintenance: Do's and don'ts
Helpful advice on how to maximize the durability and beauty of your flooring with proper cleaning and maintenance
1. Always soap your oil finished wood floor regularly
Soap your floor means mopping with WOCA Natural Soap - a wood soap designed to clean and protect oil finished surfaces from dirt, stains and wear and tear. WOCA Natural Soap cleans and leaves behind an invisible layer of soy and coconut fats, which greatly help to ward off most anything. When used on a regular basis, WOCA Natural Soap makes your oil finished wood floor dirt and wear resistant and easier to keep clean
2. Clean and protect your floor with proper wood cleaning products - and avoid common household items
It is important to carefully consider what products to use for your wood floor cleaning, as you can easily end up with an unwanted result if you use common household items instead. The pH value in some household items is very high, which can strip the finish, discolour the wood and leave your floor unprotected.
Recommendation: Clean your wood floors with WOCA Wood Cleaner and various wood soaps, for instance WOCA Natural Soap, instead. These products are specially developed for cleaning and protecting wood floors in the most careful and efficient way.
3. Why is WOCA Natural Soap so important for oil finished floors?
Think of it like caring for your skin. You want a product that cleanses AND protects it from getting dry and cracked. Like a moisturizing cleanser, WOCA Natural Soap removes the dirt while creating a new microscopic, breathable soap film on the wood surface.
4. Use two buckets when cleaning the floor
You need to use two buckets to properly clean the floor: one bucket containing the soap solution and a second bucket with pure water to rinse the mop. Change the water in the second bucket as needed. This two-bucket wash method prevents the floor from getting a greyish gleam caused by dirty water. Has the floor already been affected though, a thorough clean with WOCA Wood Cleaner can resolve the problem and remove the dirt from the surface.
5. Visible footprints on your freshly washed floor?
The problem may be an excessive dosage of soap. The content in our different WOCA soaps has been carefully combined to achieve a perfect texture and quality. So even though you think, you are doing the floor a favour, it is very important to mix the soap with water as recommended on the label.
Recommendation: Clean the floor with pure, lukewarm water (without soap) and the footprints will disappear again.
6. Easy maintenance of oil finished wood floors
Maintaining an oiled floor is now easier than ever. The solution is called WOCA Oil Care. WOCA Oil Care can be applied manually without using a polishing machine. All you need is a WOCA Wool Pad or cotton cloth. The Oil Care dries extremely fast and the floor can already be used with caution after approx. one hour. WOCA Oil Care provides the floor with additional hard wearing properties in the upper pore layer, while providing the floor with a beautiful, mat appearance at the same time.
Please notice: WOCA Oil Care can only be used on areas, where the oiled surface is intact. If the floor appears dried out, WOCA Oil Care cannot be applied. In that case, the floor needs to be sanded and oiled once again.
7. Wood Cleaner reduces surface tensions
The use of WOCA Wood Cleaner can reduce surface tensions in any wood floor. Surface tensions are present, when a basic treatment or maintenance product do not penetrate into the wood. It is often seen with new and dried-out wood floors. A thorough cleaning with WOCA Wood Cleaner reduces the surface tensions, so the following treatment can be done with great result.
8. Vinyl and Lacquer Care
WOCA Vinyl and Lacquer Care leaves a microscopic, protective film on the surface and repairs the tiny scratches that cannot be seen with the naked eye. The scratches appear as mat areas on the surface when exposed in the light flowing through windows. WOCA Vinyl and Lacquer Care can also reduce some of the severe wear under tables, caused by chairs being pulled back and forth, while providing the floor with a fine, mat appearance.
9. Proper cleaning of lacquered wood floors
If you decide to clean your lacquered floor with a cleaning solution with a high pH-value, this will slowly damage the lacquer in the long run and leave the floor unprotected. Instead, the cleaning must be done with a specially developed soap, such as WOCA Vinyl- and Lacquer Soap. This pH-neutral soap efficiently removes dirt and grease from the surface without affecting the actual lacquer finish.
10. Microfiber mops are not recommended
Many people believe that a microfiber mop is a great tool for wood floor cleaning. However, microfiber mops are mildly abrasive and will gradually wear down an oil finish. Recommendation: Use a quality swep mop / cotton yarn twist mop instead.
11. Why you shouldn't use soap flakes
Many people consider soap flakes to be a wonderful cleaning product at home for a variety of things. However, this product does not have a beneficial effect on wood. Soap flakes basically degrease and dry out the wood, while weakening the natural properties of the wood. Subsequently the risk of splits is increased radically.
12. Cleaning of oil finished wood floors
