It’s not uncommon for people to confuse laminate flooring with viny flooring, and that’s because when something is ‘laminated’ it generally means that a think coating is put over it to keep it more protected from wear and tear or staining. That’s fair enough, but the truth is that laminate flooring is nothing like vinyl flooring at all. Quite often when you walk into a home, office, or showroom and see the nice ‘wood’ floors you’re actually looking at laminate floors. It’s true, that’s not actual wood – it’s laminate flooring that’s engineered to look like real wood. 

It’s what we have in our home, and it very likely may be what you have in yours too.  So if that’s the case, you may be wondering how to clean laminate floors in the best way. Most people are quite content to simply sweep or vacuum them and then use a steam mop or something similar, but is that really the best way to get them clean?

We’ll have a look at that here, but before we do we’ll say that keeping ALL floors clean is important and that certainly does include your home. But it is even more important to keep floors clean in commercial properties and so if you have laminate floors in your place of business then the way you clean them becomes even more important.

Be Wary of Soaps, for Starters

Many inexpensive multi-purpose surface cleaners that you can buy at your local Wal-Mart or elsewhere can actually do more harm than good when it comes to laminate floors. The chemical reagents in some of them can actually weaken the fibres that give your floors strength and durability. This means that the laminate flooring may wear out sooner, and you’ll be replacing your floors much sooner than you’d like to. 

Not saying to NOT use cleaners, but one of the best pieces of advice with how to clean laminate floors is to always use the more expensive liquid cleaners as they tend to be better quality and less caustic. 

Let’s now turn our discussion of how to clean laminate floors onto the best actual practices when you’re about to get to work and get your floors clean. 

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Clean Regularly

If you clean thoroughly – but not regularly – you’re very likely to not get your floor as clean as you’d like them to be. Even if they look especially clean. That’s because dust and dirt can build up in the grooves of the flooring and in between the individual pieces of the laminate. Over time as that dirt, dust, and grime build up it becomes more condensed, and it becomes harder to dislodge. However, these floors can still appear visibly clean, even though they’re not. 

So the general consensus here for how to clean laminate flooring is to do it at least once a week, and the best practices for doing that are to sweep regularly with a soft-bristle broom or use an angled broom that will be better for getting into corners and along baseboards. If you prefer to vacuum, use a soft-brush attachment that won’t scratch your laminate flooring. Also use a hard-floor setting if your vacuum has one.

Use a Laminate Floor Mop

Another good tip for how to clean laminate floors is to mop you floors like anyone else, but don’t use just any mop. A mop that’s designed for use on laminate floors is best, but if you have a standard steam mop then here’s the best way to clean a laminate floor with a steam mop. The one important takeaway here is that you shouldn’t use any mop that puts an excess of liquid onto your floors, and for ones that do leave some moisture on the surface of the floors you should dry them by hand right away.

A dry microfiber cloth or dry mop is best for doing this, but the most important thing is to make sure your laminate floors are dry. They don’t have to be completely dry, but the idea is to not have moisture remaining on them after you’ve cleaned them. And it goes without saying you should never soak your floors when cleaning them. Part of how to clean laminate floors is using common sense!

Stains Should Only be Spot Treated

Most laminate floors are fairly stain-resistant, but sometimes you’ll find that a spill that’s not seen to right away does leave a stain. Fortunately, most laminate flooring these days is built to be stain-resistant, but if do come across one the best thing to is blot it with a microfiber cloth to start. Grease stains tend to be the most stubborn, so if you get one here’s how to clean laminate floors when it’s a grease stain you’re trying to get rid of:

Place some ice on the floor in the spot and leave it there to ‘freeze’ the stain. This will make it easier to get rid of and this is a good trick related to how to clean laminate floors. Once it’s very cold to the touch and frozen you’ll find that soap and water gets it up more effectively. Other times you can use acetone to get rid of stains on laminate floors.

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TILE CONTRACTORS LAMINATE FLOORINGVINYL FLOORINGBATHROOM RENOVATIONSKITCHEN RENOVATIONELECTRICAL SERVICESPLUMBINGHOME RENOVATIO