Maintaining your hardwood floors can have many benefits beyond just looking good. Hardwood flooring that’s well-maintained can be a selling point for any property, especially if it’s older wood. It’s important to treat a quality hardwood floor with the care it deserves if you want to protect your investment.

While there are a number of sanding and refinishing options for older floors, a finished floor can come with some challenges if you don’t know the proper steps to take to maintain it. As hardwood flooring experts, we’re here to help answer some common questions regarding how to take care of wood floors. Whether you’re dealing with a brand new floor or one that’s been on the property for decades, here are some steps you can take to preserve your hardwood and therefore, your property’s value.

Pay Attention to the Finish

One of the most important factors to take into account when maintaining a hardwood floor is the finish applied to it. Using a cleaning product that interacts badly with the applied finish can have terrible outcomes. If your floors are relatively new, you’re in luck. The most popular finish for modern floors is composed of polyurethane. This type of finish, also known as a surface finish, is water-resistant and stain-resistant, so it requires less maintenance than other types of finishes. Standard products for cleaning hardwood floors will almost always be safe for polyurethane surface finishes.

Another type of finish sometimes used for residential hardwood flooring is a wax finish. This finish soaks into the wood, making them tougher than surface finishes. This is typically only seen in older floors and requires cleaning products specifically designed for these types of floors.

Maintain Floors Regularly

One of the key steps you can take to keep your floors in good condition is to maintain them regularly. To make sure your floors are in the best shape possible, you should pay attention to them more than a couple of times per year, even if you have a durable finish! While finishes are good at reducing stains and water damage, they are susceptible to damage, especially from debris like dirt and dust. This debris can scrape the wood – especially under furniture or carpets. An easy step you can take that will have a huge impact on the quality of your floor is to sweep your floor regularly, and mop whenever you can.

Another easy step you can take to reduce damage from debris is to sweep entryways frequently. This step will prevent a lot of that debris from getting on the floors from the get-go, so you’ll have less maintenance work in the future.

Use the Best Tools

The tools you use to maintain your floors are just as important as how often you use them. While normal brooms work fine on hardwood floors, something with a little more updated technology, like a microfiber mop or cloth, is not only more efficient at cleaning, but also gentler on the floor when sweeping, as it grabs debris, instead of pushing it across the wood. On that note when you’re mopping traditionally, you want to make sure that you’re using the right product on the floor. You can check with the manufacturer online to be sure.

Make it a Priority

While it can be difficult to maintain the floors when your property is occupied by tenants, there are some steps you can take to try to keep them maintained. You can’t force the tenants to clean the floors all the time, but if you communicate to them the importance of keeping the floors in good condition, they’ll likely be more proactive about maintaining the hardwood. Keep in mind that many people don’t know that hardwood needs to be maintained or how to do it. Be sure to create a guide with some basic floor-maintenance guidelines for your tenants, and be clear that hardwood floor-damage will be taken out of their deposit. Physically getting this information into the renter’s hands can go a long way towards keeping your floors in good condition for many years to come.

Whether your hardwood is ready for a deep clean and recoating, if you are in need of a wood floor repair or refurbishment, or you are looking to install hardwood floors into your property for the first time, the team at Artisan Wood Floors LLC serving NJ and Philadelphia are the experts! Call (215) 515-7355 today and ask for Steve to make an inquiry and get a free quote