Hardwood floors add style and functionality to your home. Maple hardwood, in particular, is a popular choice for hardwood flooring. Its biggest advantage is its vibrant colour that illuminates your home.
However, you’ll have to clean your maple hardwood floors from time to time. As with any household material, you’ll need frequent maintenance. Fortunately, maple hardwood floors are relatively easy to clean and maintain.
This article will discuss how you can maintain your maple hardwood floors. We’ll take you through a step-by-step process of ensuring your maple floorings last a very long time. Without much further delay, let’s jump right in.
How Often to Clean Maple Hardwood Floors?
The first question on your mind is probably how often you need to clean your maple hardwood floors. Generally, it depends on the amount of foot traffic that occurs over that area of your home.
For example, areas like the kitchen or bathroom experience heavy foot traffic. We advise that you clean the maple floors there once a week.
In the kitchen, you’ll experience sauces and stews spilling frequently. As for the bathroom, you can expect soapy water to splash on the maple floors. These liquid spills can harden and ruin the allure of the maple floors.
For areas that experience lower foot traffic, like hallways, the best way to clean the maple hardwood floors is bi-weekly. This way, you’ll eliminate the chances of grime build-up and avoid over-saturating the area with floor cleaner.
Essential Items Necessary for Cleaning Maple Floors
In this segment, we’ll go over the important items needed to clean maple hardwood floors. Most of these items are regular household items so that you won’t be overstretching your budget.
- Liquid soap
- Vinegar
- Microfiber mop
- Broom or vacuum cleaner
- Large bucket
- Bleach
- Hardwood floor cleaner
Liquid Soap
Liquid soap refers to your regular dish soap from your kitchen. This dish soap is viscous and tough on stains. You don’t need a lot of liquid soap. Plus, liquid soap combines with water to make the ideal cleaning agent.
Vinegar
Using vinegar is an essential tip for cleaning maple flooring due to its natural cleansing properties. You can apply vinegar to a sponge and rub it over a dirty spot immediately to get rid of the spot.
Microfiber Mop
When cleaning the maple floors, we recommend you use a microfiber mop over a regular one. These microfiber mops possess soft bristles that will not scar the surface of your maple floors.
Sometimes, regular mops may harbour sharp pieces of dirt that may bruise the maple floor during mopping. However, with the microfiber mop, there’s no such chance.
Broom or Vacuum Cleaner
You might jump straight to a mop when learning how to clean maple hardwood floors. However, you must sweep or vacuum the surface of the maple floorboards first. You’ll remove large sand particles and dirt that may scratch the maple floor.
Large Bucket
You need a large bucket to contain your cleaning agent. The bucket should have wheels for easy navigation as well.
Bleach
Bleach can act as an excellent substitute for vinegar. Bleach is also a common household item that possesses strong cleansing properties. The bleach also adds the bonus advantage of killing germs on the maple floors.
Hardwood Floor Cleaner
You may not own a hardwood floor cleaner in your home by default. Nevertheless, the hardwood floor cleaner is a great way to maintain your maple hardwood floors. You apply this thick substance over your maple floor to bring out its shine.
Related Article: How To Clean Hardwood Floors
How to Clean your Maple Hardwood Floors?
Here’s what you need to do:
Sweeping the Floor
The first step to cleaning the maple floors is using a broom to sweep away all the surface debris. Debris can include substances like sharp sand particles that can scrape the surface of the maple floor.
Additionally, after you buy maple hardwood floors and install them, you should also sweep away the entire dust residue that will remain on top. Conversely, a vacuum cleaner can suck in any surface dirt. Either way, the first step to cleaning your maple floorboards is using a broom or vacuum cleaner.
Mop the Floorboards
Once you have swept the surface of the maple floors, you can proceed with the mop. Get your large bucket and mix your hardwood cleaning solution in it. You can use bleach or vinegar if you don’t have the hardwood cleaner.
However, after dipping the mop in the bucker, ensure to ring out the excess water thoroughly. The best way to clean the maple hardwood floors is with a damp mop, not a wet one.
A wet mop can cause water stains on the surface of the maple floorboards. Therefore, warranties may be invalid if excess water remains on the surface of the maple floor, according to the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association.
Use Ice for Hard and Sticky Stains
Frequently, after mopping the maple floors, some stains may still linger. Examples of these stains are tar or gum. There may need to use more than the cleaning solution to remove the sticky residue.
In this case, a great tip for cleaning maple flooring is the application of ice. You can place a bag of ice on the gooey substance and watch it harden.
The ice will freeze the tar or gum stain and make it brittle. Then, you can use a knife or carpet tool to scrape the now brittle foreign agent away.
Clean out Pet Stains with Bleach
If you want to know how to clean maple hardwood floors with pet accidents, we recommend using bleach. Bleach is a natural cleanser, and it’s also a disinfectant. The bleach will purge the pet stains and kill whatever germs were harbouring on the floor’s surface.
Attack Dark Stains with Alcohol
Alcohol may be suitable for getting your party going, but the spirit can also serve your maple floorboards. Once you’ve gotten rid of all dirt, grime, tar, and pet stains, you may have to deal with dark spots.
Things like hot coals or age can cause dark spots on your hardwood floor. However, in this case, you can clean your maple hardwood floors with alcohol.
Apply some alcohol to the surface of the dark spot. Then, wait a couple of minutes and wipe down the alcohol with a damp cloth. The dark spot should varnish.
Related Article: How to Refinish Red Oak Flooring
Final Thoughts
Your maple hardwood floors will elevate your home’s ambience and resale value. Hence, it’s essential that you keep it looking spick and span for the sake of longevity.
Your maintenance efforts go farther when you buy top-quality maple hardwood flooring. That’s why LV Flooring delivers top-quality maple hardwood floors that are easy to clean while remaining resilient and durable.
Look through our online collection or call us today to learn more!
