How to clean flooring laminate? This question must have been lingering all the times, especially for those who have beautiful flooring laminate in their house.
For your information, more and more people adore such flooring because it combines the beauty of natural wood with completely easy maintenance.
Unfortunately, despite the completely easy maintenance many people still do not have any idea about to clean it properly. What should you do then?
Read also: How to Clean Ceramic Tile Floors and Grout?
Instructions
As having been mentioned above, cleaning flooring laminate is completely easy. With the right preparation and appropriate procedures, you can keep the beauty of your flooring laminate for such a long time. For a start, you need to have the following two things: microfiber mops and cleaning solution.
This microfiber mop can glide across your flooring laminate and it easily picks up any types of dirt and hair. Its swivel head can cover huge areas so you can your flooring, laminate easily without any effort. The cleaning solution, then, will help you a lot in bringing back your bright and shiny flooring laminate.
In cleaning your flooring laminate, you may pay attention to the following steps:
- Vacuum your flooring laminate in order to get rid of dust and tumbleweeds
- Dampen the pad of your microfiber mop with warm water and spray your cleaning solution all over your laminate flooring
- Mop your floor
- When the pad gets too dirty, you have to rinse and replace the pad; then, you may continue cleaning your floor
- When you have done your job, you can rinse your microfiber pad and put it in either your wash machine or your sanitary wash
You should not clean your laminate flooring with a string mop or sponge mop because both mops take more efforts and longer time. Plus, they might leave streaky spot and they also use lots of water. As a result, moisture from water might fall into and fill the cracks left over the flooring laminate.
Instructions on General Cleaning
In order to maintain the beauty of your flooring laminate, you should perform the daily maintenance. For this purpose, there are some steps that you can take. These steps will be explained as follows:
1. Sweep the floor regularly in order to remove any dirt
- Although laminate flooring is scratch-resistant, accumulating dirt, hair and debris might cause scratches over time. Sweeping the floor regularly can prevent such accumulation.
- In order to get maximum result, you may consider using any vacuum cleaners with soft-brush attachment.
- Do not clean your laminate flooring with a standard floor brush. Such brush can damage the surface through stiff and straw-like bristles.
- Sweep the floor according to the direction where the floor has been laid. This will allow you to pick up any debris that falls all around your flooring laminate.
2. Clean up spills immediately by using a cloth or a sponge
- You should never allow any types of liquid to sit on the floor for such a long time. Liquid certainly can damage the protective layer of your flooring.
- Soak up the excess liquid with a dry cloth
- Make sure to make the cloth wet first or the sponge before cleaning the spill in order to completely clean any residue that is left.
- Wipe the spot with a dry and if possible soft-texture cloth and do not let the spilled area stay wet.
Alternative Cleaning Solutions
In “Instruction” section, we used to discuss about cleaning solution for your laminate flooring. Such cleaning solutions are available anywhere in the market. However, since they are chemicals, they might not be environmentally friendly. As an alternative, you can create your own cleaning solution. What you need is only vinegar and water.
- Create a solution of vinegar and water. Pour ¼ cup or 60 ml of vinegar into 30-32 Oz or 940-1000 ml spray bottle. Then, fill the rest of the spray bottle with plain water and shake it well so that the solution might be perfectly combined.
- Diluted vinegar is very useful for cleaning hard-to-remove stain that usually causes your flooring laminate to fade or dull
- Vinegar, by the way, is too abrasive in its pure form. That’s the reason why vinegar should be combined with water.
- There is another recipe for this vinegar solution: you can combine 1/3 Cup or 80 ml of vinegar, 3 squirts of liquid dish detergent and 1 gallon or 4 liters of warm water.
- Spray the solution over your flooring laminate a little bit at one time. The coverage area should be around 1 foot or 30.5 cm.
- Don’t spray the vinegar solution all at once. Otherwise, you won’t have a chance to clean your flooring laminate in overall.
- Wipe the solution with damp mop or cloth. After you have sprayed the vinegar solution, you should clean the sprayed area quickly.
- Remember not to use abrasive cloths. As an alternative, you may use a soft microfiber cloth.
- Wring out your mop before you use and, remember, you should not soak the floor with water. Otherwise, you will cause warping all over your laminate flooring due to the moisture.
- Dry the laminate. If you feel that a lot of water still stays in your flooring laminate, then you should soak it up and dry it with a microfiber cloth. On the other hand, if the amount of water is very low, then you may let it dry by itself.
Hard to Remove Stains
Some stains are indeed hard to remove. As a consequence, these stains need special treatment. The stains that have been quite hard to remove, by the way, are as follows:
- Blood
For cleaning this stain, you should use window cleaner. Spray the blood stain with a small amount of window cleaner and clean it with non-abrasive microfiber damp cloth. The quicker you handle this stain, the sooner the stain will be removed.
- Chewing gum
In this situation, you should use a plastic knife to take out the chewing gum. Then, you should spray mineral spirits in order to remove any leftover. Remember not to use a metal knife since it might scratch your floor. You may also use damp cloth for cleaning the leftover.
- Soda, wine, crayon marks and ink
For this situation, you wipe them with a damp microfiber cloth. Similar to the previous stain, you will also need to use mineral spirits for removing the stain. If you find that some stains are harder to remove, you can add a little detergent or ink. Then, you have to make sure clean again the spilled area with warm and clean water.
- Polish, shoe polish and tar
In this case, you have to add a little nail polish removal to your damp cloth and scrub the stain until it is totally removed. Then, you should wipe the spilled area clean with clean and warm water.
- Heel marks and scuff
This type is stain is quite easy to remove. You just need to simply rub the stain with an eraser until they are totally off.
- Grease
This one might be quite tough. You should freeze it by applying an ice pack or frozen vegetables. Then, you can scrape the frozen grease with a plastic knife. The remaining grease might be wiped out by a small amount of window cleaner sprayed on the spot and a damp cloth. Remember not to use a metal knife.
In order to maintain its beauty, you may apply protective pad all over your laminate flooring. You may also place doormats and floor mats; they will certainly trap dirt long before it steps into your house. By doing so, and of course by following the above instructions, you will not only bring back the beauty of your flooring laminate but also make it last longer. This is the end of the discussion related to how to clean flooring laminate and hopefully this discussion will be useful.
Originally posted 2021-01-20 20:54:00.