It’s never an eye-pleasing sight when your precious Linoleum floor starts collecting stubborn stain. Nor it will go away if you keep starring at it. To retain the fresh look and make it long-lasting, there is no alternative to good old deep cleaning every so often.
Now, you might already have installed the Linoleum floor in your place. On the contrary, you may be planning to get one in the next few days. Either way, it will be in your best interest to know, how to deep clean linoleum floors.
What Is Linoleum Floor?
In a nutshell, Linoleum is a natural composite flooring material. The floor generally consists of flaxseed and linseed oil. Besides, there are other natural elements like wood flours, jute, tree resins, and cork powders. Instead of separate layers, all the elements are embedded together.
People value the Linoleum floor for their low maintenance, durable, hypoallergenic, and antibacterial properties. On top of that, it’s highly eco-friendly. It’s been in use for more than 100 years in houses and various business real states.
How Frequently Linoleum Floors Need Cleaning?
Generally, it’s a good practice to clean at least once or twice a week depending on the usage. Ask yourself:
- Is your place tends to have a large gathering?
- Are people frequently come from outside with dirt and mud on their shoes?
- Do you spill drinks or foods and not clean thoroughly afterward?
In such cases, you are bound to clean your linoleum floors daily. Some owners have their floor coated with a protective layer, which helps a lot in slow wear. On the other hand, old floors tend to catch dirt and stain much quickly and need frequent cleaning.
If you are lucky, you might not have to clean it for weeks. But you would want to inspect every now then to so see if there’s a spot unchecked and dealt with promptly to ease the future cleaning.
How To Deep Clean Linoleum Floors: Steps Involved
For regular cleaning, you will need these tools-
- The sweeper or a vacuum cleaner for removing dirt.
- Bucket with warm or cool water.
- A Mop
- Scrubbing brush for removing a hard stain.
- An old towel to dry up excess moisture.
1. Remove dirt and loose particles
For Linoleum floors, every cleaning process should start with a thorough sweeping. If you have a vacuum cleaner, put it on the hard surface mood to get the best result. Removing all the dust from the surface will prime the floor for wet mopping. Also, it helps to prevent making any scratches by the debris.
When you are sweeping make sure you check all the tricky places. Rough corners and under the appliances are the places people tend to forget. If you can’t reach those places with the broom using a small brush.
After that, you might want to sweep the floor again with a microfiber cloth. It’s because even if you carefully vacuumed every inch of the floor there might be still some particle left on the surface. Wiping down with microfiber cloth makes sure that doesn’t happen.
2. Making cleaning solution
You can always use plain water to mop the linoleum floor. It wouldn’t hurt you either if you add a little extra in the water. But remember not to add any ammonia-based cleaner. It may hurt your floor.
Get a bucket of lukewarm water and add a few drops of dish soap. Here you don’t need to go overboard with the soap liquid. If you like you can also add other linoleum floor cleaner available in the market. But it’s best to consult with the floor manufacturer for the best result.
3. Mop the floor
When you have completed making a cleaning solution, dip your mop gently. Your goal is to wet the mop with soap water and try to wire as much as possible. The thing with the Linoleum floor is it can stand water on the top. It should be slightly damp and possibly with some foam.
Now gently mop the floor with the grain so stain/dirt between the cracks is addressed properly. For your convenience make little sections of your whole work area. Once you completed a section, proceed to the next section. Remember to presoak and drop excess water from the mop every time you change section.
4. Rinse with water
At this stage, your job is to mop the whole floor again with lukewarm water or regular cold water. The idea here is to get rid of any cleaner residue that may later cause dirt to stick on the floor. Rundown each section with a water-dampened mop. Once is fine and should be enough.
5. Dry the Floor
Now you are on the final stage. Once you are satisfied that no residue left on the floor, it’s time to run over the floor once again with dry cloth or towel. This will accelerate the drying process much faster. For a large area, you might need several dry towels to complete the task.
Best Things To Clean Linoleum Floors With (Alternative Solution)
The problem with the traditional cleaning solution is, often they contain harsh chemical compounds. If you think about the dish soap, sometimes they come with acidic content and other chemical elements in it. That’s why more and more individuals are turning to alternative natural solutions.
Vinegar
One of them is Vinegar. It’s the most inexpensive and easily accessible substance in any household. Plus it doesn’t have any weird smell or chemical after-effects. Vinegar has low acidic properties that don’t harm the linoleum finish.
Baking soda
Here is another common household item you can find in any kitchen. Baking soda can be a pretty powerful cleaning agent when it comes to tough stain. You will only need a few pinches of baking soda and a scrubber to completely remove any stain.
How To Clean Really Dirty Linoleum Floors
Apart from regular stain, you may come across really dirty looking floors. The result of long-overdue cleaning or liquid spill of sorts can be a filthy one. Long water exposure on Linoleum also tends to leave a nasty mark on the floors.
In order to clean this, you need to follow these steps-
- First of all, clean any dust and debris from the surface, you don’t want to make it any worse at this point.
- You can use the recommended cleaner from the manufacturer or you can use baking powder with vinegar. Mix a small amount of both ingredients in water. Use that solution to scrub with a brush.
- If that doesn’t help, you can use WD-40 to lift the stain marks and scrub it with a brush. Then perform water rinses and dry the portion.
- After the floor is completely dry, you can add a few coats of recommended floor polish. Make sure to give it time to dry between coats.
Maintenance Tips For Linoleum Floor
- First on the list is never to let any watery substance sit on the floor. It’s best to clean It immediately.
- The Linoleum floor does indeed need extra care from time to time. With regular care, the Linoleum floor can last 30 to 40 years and still give you the gratification of the natural comfort and all the desirable qualities. Here are some maintenance tips to help you out in the future-
- Always put a doormat at each entry point to the house. When people come from outside they tend to carry a lot of dirt and mud along with their shoes. As a result Linoleum floors get scratched and stained a lot. So doormat will certainly reduce dirt incoming from the outside.
- In house whenever you are moving furniture’s be sure to take extra precautionary measures to prevent leaving any scratch marks on the floor. Also, use pads under every leg of the table and chairs so they don’t leave any marks.
- If you have a plant inside your house or office, place a bowl to catch any excess water from the plant. Water accumulation will damage the Linoleum floor.
- When you are installing a rug over the Linoleum floor make sure it doesn’t have latex or rubber back. Because rubber back also causes friction and with small dust buildup it would deal catastrophic scratches.
- While cleaning Linoleum floors never use highly acidic or ammonia-based cleaner solutions. It would thin the finishing layer up top and wear quickly.
Wrapping UP
Linoleum is very unique flooring material with lots of health and environmental benefits. As for the lasting period, there are only a few flooring materials that come close to Linoleum.
Our article on how to deep clean linoleum floors is exactly catered towards individuals, who are looking to step up their cleaning game.
We hope you take away something new today and will make the best use of it.