Laminate Floor Care: A User’s Guide

Laminate floors have recently come back into favor among the masses – and with good reason. Now more than ever, laminate floors look, feel, and wear like real floors do, for about half of the cost. Another great reason to think about purchasing laminate floors is the amount of care laminate floors need: minimal to none. You will be able to have beautiful floors for years and years without having to do a ton of work. Unlike porcelain tiles, they won’t break or crack; unlike wood floors, you don’t have to sand them to get the shine and luster back; and unlike carpeting, you don’t have to vacuum and worry about particles getting caught deep in the fibers.
Instead, you can get away with doing minimal work and still have them look great. However, it is important to note that you do have to perform some maintenance – you can’t get away with nothing at all.
Laminate Floor Care: The Basics
Laminate floor care requires a few different tools, including a dust mop, soft bristle broom, or some other type of broom that isn’t too hard, or you will scratch the flooring. You can also use a vacuum cleaner that uses only suction, but you want to ensure that it has no beater bar.
If you have stickiness on the floor or you need something with a deeper clean, you want to use the least abrasive type of cleaning agent possible. If you use a liquid cleaner, you want to use a cotton, terry cloth, or microfiber mop. You absolutely want to avoid using a wet-mop for laminate floor care.
As your flooring ages, you want to move and rearrange your furniture so that your floor ages evenly – this is one of the best ways to keep your laminate floor looking new. If you have laminate flooring near a door, try to eliminate contact with snow, rain, and mud.
Extra Tip: Another way to stop laminate floors from degrading in quality is to eliminate the amount of sunlight that touches laminate flooring. UV rays and excessive heat can really dull the colors of the floor and can even warp some laminate flooring.
Laminate Floor Care: Preventative Steps
Even more than the actual treatment, so much of laminate floor care goes into the preventative steps that you need to take. You want to be sure to carefully remove stubborn stains or things that will stain stubbornly as quickly as possible. On certain floors, you can use something like acetone-based fingernail polish remover to get most of the staining up. You may want to spot check to see if your tiles can take it – talk to the company that installed your laminate flooring for a spare piece of tile to test. Of course, the sooner you can get to any of these spots, the better. Use a soft cloth that is clean and does not have any abrasive material on it.
If wax or chewing gum falls onto your floor, you want to use ice to harden the substances. This will make it easy to scrape off – but do no use a metal scraper. Instead, use a credit card so that you don’t scratch the surface.
If you have a tile that is beyond repair, it is possible to get spot treatments for your laminate floor – they can completely replace the tile, and you won’t disrupt the rest of your flooring.
Finally, you want to invest in floor mats and protective pads for your furniture. This isn’t only true when you are moving your furniture, but you can use it at all times. This will reduce the risk of indentations in your flooring and potential scratches from normal usage. Remember that dirt, asphalt, sand, oil, and anything else that might even have a little bit of grit can scratch your flooring. In your kitchen, even crumbs will scratch your floor. You want to avoid this debris as much as possible by cleaning regularly and placing mats where you can.
Laminate Floor Care: Avoidance
Much of laminate floor care is actually avoiding some of the items that can really impact your flooring. You want to avoid polishes, oils, soaps, detergents, window cleaners, varnish, wax, and cleaners meant for other mediums. These should not be used on laminate because they can fade, scratch, and even pull up laminate tiles.
Do not apply cleaners that you can use directly to the surface of the laminate either – this can cause staining and discoloration. You can either spray it on a cleaning cloth or dilute it to use with a damp mop. On that same end, you want to avoid spray mops, steam cleaners, or anything that uses “power” to clean your flooring.
Interested in Laminate Floor Care In El Paso TX?
Need laminate floor care? If you want to play it safe, contact a professional for some help. Get in touch with us today (915) 206-5094, and we can help you to figure out the most effective laminate floor care company in El Paso TX that could address any of your questions about installation, maintenance, and care for laminate flooring.