How to Clean Linoleum Floors
Is your scratched linoleum flooring driving you crazy? If so, you’re hardly alone.
While linoleum floors have long been renowned for their durability and low maintenance requirements, they aren’t as heavy-duty as vinyl floors. This raises the prospect that you might not yet be practising the best way to clean linoleum floors.
The good news is that linoleum flooring can last for decades – if cleaned right.
So, let’s put the spotlight on the benefits that professional cleaning can have for maintaining your linoleum flooring, with expert insights.
Why Linoleum Floor Cleaning Needs Pros
Although some of the basic upkeep of linoleum flooring can be done by amateurs, it is also undeniable that linoleum requires special care.
There can be durability risks with linoleum flooring if the right methods, products, and tools aren’t used to clean it; using overly harsh chemicals, for instance, is a classic mistake. Plus, if your linoleum floor is a darker hue such as navy, brown, or charcoal, you might easily miss the dirt build-up over time.
By contrast, the leading cleaning professionals know exactly what to do with linoleum floors. They’re skilled in using gentle, pH-neutral cleaners on linoleum, and low-moisture techniques such as damp mopping, as well as high-quality equipment. This all helps ensure an excellent result from the cleaning of linoleum flooring.
Expert Secrets for Cleaning Linoleum Floors
There isn’t just one best way to clean linoleum floors! By combining these approaches, the pros restore the beauty of this popular flooring:
Dry Sweeping
Before the wet-cleaning stage, pros often dry sweep a linoleum floor with an electrostatically charged broom. This helps capture dust and hair, making the most of linoleum’s smooth surface, which allows static to pull fine debris.
Safe Stain Removal
Professionals in linoleum floor cleaning know how crucial it is to first assess the specific type of stain. A grease stain, for instance, might require a different approach to a food stain or a dye stain.
Then, they’ll be able to select the right cleaning method and products. A specialised cleaning agent or mild solution, such as baking soda paste or diluted vinegar, can achieve great results when applied directly to the stain.
Damp Mopping
Another superb pro tip for how to clean linoleum floors, is the use of a two-bucket system. The first bucket contains a mild cleaner, and the second bucket, clean water.
The cleaning professional wrings a microfibre mop until it’s barely wet, before dipping it into the solution, mopping, and then rinsing it in the clean water. This helps avoid the excess water that can be so damaging to linoleum floors.
Protective Polishing
Following a deep clean, the pros also know that applying a thin coat of linseed oil to linoleum flooring, a maximum of once a year, can help restore its “factory sheen” and protect against further dirt build-up.
Scratch Prevention
Now, what about those annoying scratches and dents? You can prevent any more of those, say the pros, by sticking felt pads under the legs of furniture such as chairs and tables.
Benefits Of Professional Linoleum Cleaning
Knowing how to clean linoleum floors – as the experts do – can help ensure this flooring lasts for as long as three or four decades. Placing your trust in professionals can also help restore and maintain your floor’s shine.
In any case, you probably have important things to be getting on with in life, such as pursuing your career and enjoying time with family. Hiring a professional cleaner, then, is a proven route to hassle-free maintenance.
Common Cleaning Mistakes Pros Avoid
Here at The Flooring Group, we’ve long seen many people make avoidable mistakes when cleaning their linoleum flooring. Frequent errors among non-experts include:
- Over-wetting the flooring by dousing it with a sopping mop or bucket, thereby risking swelling or mould. A pro is well-versed in the ethos of “damp mopping only”.
- Abrasive scrubbing, which can cause the aforementioned scratching. Pros, on the other hand, know how to “lift, not grind”, using soft microfibre cloths or nylon brushes.
- Using the wrong cleaning products, such as bleach or ammonia. Get a professional to clean your linoleum flooring, and they will stick to pH-neutral cleaners that are tough on dirt but gentle on oils.
Conclusion
In summary, it turns out that the best way to clean linoleum floors, is to leave it to the experts! Doing so will enable you to best preserve its pleasing appearance and longevity.
Get in touch with our own team at The Flooring Group today, whether by emailing us or by calling 0207 609 1234, to get a free consultation and a quote for the flooring you want.
