Just bought a house furnished with vinyl flooring? Understandably, you couldn’t be happier with those shiny flooring details.
But wait! It’s not going to last very long if you don’t know how to maintain it properly. Luckily vinyl is one of few low maintenance flooring materials. You can easily retain its shine by a simple cleaning routine.
Before we start on the best way to clean vinyl plank flooring, let’s learn a bit more on the Vinyl floor itself.
What Is Vinyl Flooring?
Vinyl flooring also known as vinyl planks is a low cost, durable and hassle-free flooring option. Due to its versatile use in almost anywhere in the house the popularity has recently increased to replace classic wood flooring in new or old homes.
As far as the benefits go, vinyl flooring is a tough one to beat. Meaning places where it’s even impossible to install wood flooring without warping, you can get away with vinyl easily. On top of that, if you have kids and pets making a mess every often in the house, there couldn’t be any better option than vinyl.
The Cleaning Frequency For Vinyl Floors
It comes down to the frequency of using the floor that determines whether you should clean it daily or weekly. To be honest, daily cleaning for a small house is a bit tedious task. You would have a more significant task at hand rather than doing cleaning every other day. For this instance, you can skip a day or two between each cleaning session. However, for a business or an institution cleaning every day is a necessity.
General Cleaning
Vinyl tends to give a lot of flexibility towards the user in terms of regular cleaning. If the area of your floor doesn’t get as much as traffic, there would be less dust. And with good old sweeping using your broom or vacuum cleaner you can get rid of those accumulations easily.
But with large and frequent kinds of traffic, dust and debris are bound to collect vigorously. That, in turn, can cause nasty stain and scratch marks all over the floor if you don’t treat it properly. For this, you will need a vacuum cleaner that is suitable for the vinyl plank floors. Run it on the hard floor sittings and you are good to go.
Most of the time general cleaning chores stop at sweeping broom or a vacuum cleaner. But only a few people know that’s not enough to remove all the dust from the floor. You will need a microfiber cloth to flush out the tiniest particle to keep your vinyl floor scratch-free.
The Best Way To Clean Vinyl Plank Flooring- Step By Step Deep Cleaning
Sometimes sweeping is not enough after accidental food spill on the floor. You can relate to this for a coffee spill and how sticky it becomes. In such a case you need more than just sweeping with a vacuum cleaner.
Supplies you will need for deep cleaning:
- Vacuum cleaner or broom
- Cleaning solution
- Microfiber Cloth
- Bucket
- Mop.
Step 1: Thoroughly sweeping the floor
Using a broom is always a good idea to take out dust before any deep cleaning procedure. The main idea here is to prevent mop to make any ugly marks on the floor during its rundown.
To be more cautious you can use a microfiber cloth and remove remaining dust particles. Try to reach the narrow places under the appliances as much as you can. After successfully sweeping with a microfiber cloth, now you can go to the next step.
Step 2: Preparing a solution
In this stage, we will be preparing a liquid solution to use in the next moping step. You should first try to consult your Vinyl floor manufacturer for the best cleaning solution. If that’s not possible, there are tons of Vinyl cleaning solutions available in the market.
Just make sure it doesn’t have ammonia or high acidic contents. Also, you can make a solution using natural or household items like dish soap, white vinegar, shampoo, etc. Mix any of these with a gallon of water. Now your cleaning solution should be ready.
Step 3: Mopping
Now you will be using the cleaning solution made earlier for mopping. Carefully dip the mop into the bucket and patiently let go excess water dripping from the mop. It’s not a good idea to drench your floor in the water. It will do more harm than good to your vinyl floor.
Make your way to each corner of the house and mop gently in one direction. If your working area is a bit large, try to divide the area into small chunks.
If you see any tough stain on the floor and solution doing anything to remove it, use vinegar and baking powder mix. Use a small brush to scrub the blemish.
Step 4: Rinsing
After successful mopping, it’s time for rinsing the floor with water. By doing that you are washing the cleaning solution leftover. Just soak the mop into the warm water and wire it out to make it slightly dampened. Now go through each room and wash away the chemical.
Step 5: Drying
The vinyl floor is very susceptible to water damage. So after rinsing with water, you wouldn’t want to leave it wet. Gently pat the surface of the floor with a towel to dry it out.
This is how to clean luxury vinyl plank floors with the intention of extending the lifespan and keeping the shine integrity for a long time.
How To Clean Vinyl Floors With Vinegar?
Vinegar is a very common ingredient in any household. For a long time, people have been using vinegar as a homemade cleanser on various surfaces. But remember vinegar does have acid content in it and cannot be used on certain flooring materials.
Luckily Vinyl isn’t one of them. Though vinegar has acid, the low concentration wouldn’t hurt the vinyl surface. Yet using a ton of vinegar may take away your shine in the process. So it’s best to use it with water.
The proper mixing ratio would be 1 cup of apple cider vinegar with 1-gallon water. This mix will easily remove grime and stain. White vinegar also works as a disinfecting solution, if you are into killing germs.
Does Vinyl Need Waxing?
In general, the Vinyl plank floor doesn’t need any kind of waxing. According to carnauba waxing, it makes the flooring more solid. Schools, hospitals, and other large institutions use this waxing to ensure sturdiness and make it look clean. It also needs a special buffing machine to apply the wax.
Although, you can use acrylic coating instead to achieve a protective layer and add shine to the surface. Acrylic is a liquid-based coating, easy to apply with a mop on the scratch-prone area. For this, however, we would recommend taking the professional service.
Do’s And Don’ts Of Vinyl Floor:
Vinyl already is a pretty forgiving flooring substance. Regular maintenance and cleaning are enough for increasing its longevity and retaining the shine. Apart from this, these are few pointers you should keep in mind-
Do’s
- Place a mat at the door for collecting shoe dust. This helps prevent outside dust particles to enter the house.
- The place felt pads under each and every furniture or appliances you have to prevent stretching underneath the legs.
- Place water collecting bowl under all the indoor plants you have in the house or office.
- Immediately mop any liquid spill on the floor. Dealing with a liquid spill at the beginning is much easier than deep scrubbing later for hours.
Don’ts
- Don’t drag any heavy furniture or any item of sorts assuming the floor can handle it.
- Don’t place a rung that has a rubber back. As it traps dust particles and later produce scratch marks under the rug.
- Don’t use highly acidic or ammonia-based cleaning solution in the routine cleaning.
- Don’t use wax on the vinyl plank floor to make it sturdy.
Final Thoughts
Coming to the end, you should now be well equipped with all the details regarding the best way to clean vinyl plank flooring under your specific circumstances. No matter how long the time passes it won’t lose the sparkle if you follow these.
Lastly, to keep your floor clean as well as sustain the original shine, remember to sweep the surface as frequently as you can. If it is the dust and the debris that makes those nasty scratches, you have a cleaning solution. If that’s not available, use vinegar and water. If you want everlasting sheen try the acrylic coating.
Now keep the vinyl plank floor clean and bring the joy of living!