DIY Decorating/Remodeling Flooring Make Your Hardwood Floors Shine!
Make Your Hardwood Floors Shine! Print E-mail
Written by Brooke   

If you're reading this article, chances are that you've admitted the truth behind your fascination with hardwood flooring. While we all claim that we love the texture and the feel of the wood on our hands and feet, the true fact of the matter is that most people that go for hardwood flooring actually only want it so that they can make it shine. However, if you truly want to make your hardwood floors shine, you need to be very vigilant and very quick on the maintenance cycle.

Dusting

Part of learning how to make hardwood floors shine has to do with keeping them free of dust. In fact, the best way to learn how to make wood floors shine is to create a situation where the floors themselves can keep the same shine they had when you first started working on them. Making hardwood floors shine from this point of view therefore has to do with making sure that you keep dust off your hardwood floors as much as possible and this involves passing a duster over the flooring on a regular basis. If you really want things to work you should do this everyday, but if you want a good chance at keeping that shine you should at least do it once a week. If you dust your floors on a regular basis you will be making wood floors shine by keeping the dirt off them.
Cleaning

In addition to dusting, you will also need to clean your floors in order to keep them shining. In fact, dusting is a good way to ensure that most of the residue that gets onto your floor is scooped up relatively quickly but you should still clean your floors at least once a month to make sure that all of the caked on dirt is removed in short order. If you dust once a week, make sure that you clean once a month. If you want to be ultra-competitive however and decide to dust everyday, you should then clean once a week to maintain the advantage.

When doing the cleaning however, make sure that you use the proper cleaners. If your floor has a urethane varnish, you need to use polyurethane cleaners so that the varnish is not damaged. If you fail to do this and damage the varnish, the lustre of your hardwood surface is going to go out the door. Hardwood by itself is not that shiny and the sooner you remember that, the better off your floor will be.

Hardwood floors shine
Polish

If you do dusting and cleaning on a regular basis, then the polishing is something that you likely won't have to do since the original varnish should hold its shiny coat for a very long time. If you want to improve on that shine however, selecting a polish that once again is safe to use on a urethane surface is a very good idea. Doing anything else risks doing more harm than good to your hardwood floor surface.

Comments (8)
  • |2009-04-04 18:46:11 Fantasia  - old hardwood floors
    Heyi live n a house with old hardwood floors n 1 room n 1 spot there is a big space n between 2 slabs of hardwood. Can this be repaired and how? Also how do u keep dirt from gettn in between the hardwood when u have a lot of traffic with kids.The space is less than half an inch.Is there something u can use to fill in the tiny cracks between the hardwood that only dirt and dust can get n? Thanks
    ReplyQuote
  • |2009-07-01 08:49:13 benson  - pub floor
    i am trying to do a huge cleanout of my pub, the floors are over a hundred years old, the wood is permently dirty, how can i clean them?
    ReplyQuote
  • |2010-04-18 19:21:26 Brooke B.  - old floors
    I have original hardwood floors that were laid in the late 50s and then polyurethaned again years later. I have tried every cleaner made for these floors and nothing restores the shine. I always get the same dull finish. What is the best, inexpensive, way to bring back the shine?
    ReplyQuote
  • |2010-06-15 13:30:27 John Campbell  - Home floor nees to shine again
    I have chocolate hardwood flooring and my dog has scratched the floor with his nails and it is quite visible as well my wife is using a home dept hardwood cleaner and parts of the floor is turning a pale colour. Any help is appreciated.

    Thanks
    ReplyQuote
  • |2010-07-23 08:06:53 jully  - Hardwood Floors Shine
    Hello,
    Very nice guiding towards shining the hardwood floors. There are a number of cleaners on the market that state they are for hardwood floors. Your best approach is to purchase a cleaner produced by hardwood flooring manufacturers or floor finish manufacturers. These can be bought from local hardwood flooring retailers or big box stores that sell hardwood flooring. Best approach is the Hardwood retailer who specializes in hardwood. Squeaky cleaner manufactured by Basic Coatings is a good product and so is Mirage cleaner. If you use cleaners that are not appropriate for your floors it can leave some sort of film on the wood surface. This can make buffing and recoating in the future difficult to achieve due to adhesion problems.
    ReplyQuote
  • |2010-11-22 14:48:27 KDWD  - Help Company coming soon!
    :?: Okay so I am having company at my house in 3 days and my floors will not keep that just mopped shine to them, they are the hardwood looking stuff that you just peel off the paper on back and stick them down. What can I do to them to make them stay shiney?
    ReplyQuote
  • |2011-03-11 05:43:10 Melanie Pottle
    I find that when it comes to using cleaning products on a finished solid floor, it is best to test the cleaning solution on an area that isn't usually visible because some products may effect the finish and do more damage than good.
    ReplyQuote
Write comment
Your Contact Details:
Comment:
[b] [i] [u] [url] [quote] [code] [img]   
:D:angry::angry-red::evil::idea::love::x:no-comments::ooo::pirate::?::(
:sleep::););)):0
Security
Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.
 
Do It Yourself
© 2012 DIY, Do It Yourself Home Improvement - DIY-HQ
Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License.