How To Look After Wooden Floors

Wooden floors need special care, but they also offer a particularly beautiful living environment. Learn more!

Wooden floors give every apartment that certain something. Unlike laminate, floors made of real wood not only exude a high level of quality and style, but also a warmth through the warm colors of wood in its different types. But wooden floors require special care.

Wooden floors are natural

Anyone laying wooden floors in their apartment or house is opting for a natural material with special properties and needs. It depends on how your wooden floor is made to find and use the right care:

• Sealed parquet floor
• Wood laminate
• Open-pored wooden floor
• Oiled wooden floor
• Limed wooden surfaces

If you choose the wrong floor care product, you may destroy your wooden floor, because what a parquet floor can withstand, for example, damages whitewashed wooden floors a lot. So it really depends on you if you want to enjoy your wooden flooring for a long time!

In the following, we will show you how to respond in particular to the individual needs of the floors.

Sealed parquet

This is the most straightforward wooden floor. If the parquet is sealed with a waterproof layer of varnish, it is quite insensitive to moisture and other stresses and soiling of everyday life. Before you wipe it wet, make sure that it is really sealed and that no water can get in at any joints.

Parquet floors that are sealed can be wiped with a normal floor cleaner and water. As with all floors, you should sweep or vacuum before mopping to remove any coarse dirt.

Wood laminate

Wood laminate flooring is one of the sensitive wooden floors, unless it has been treated afterwards. There are two problems with wood laminate that require special care when cleaning:

• Moisture can penetrate the laminate joints
• The wood layer is very thin and can easily swell or crack open

There is the option of protecting wood laminate against moisture penetration after laying on the edges of the individual laminate pieces. Mostly, however, this is left out for time and cost reasons and the penetrating moisture can damage the edges.

Wood laminate should therefore mainly be dry cleaned by sweeping and vacuuming regularly. You can only wipe the floor with a damp cloth if it is extremely dirty. You can remove larger stains with a damp cloth and a little soapy water.

Open-pored wooden floor

An open-pored, untreated wooden floor ensures a particularly good room climate, as it is extremely breathable and promotes the natural room climate in every season. However, it is also particularly sensitive because the untreated wood is “open to everything” in the truest sense of the word.

A grease stain can only be removed with fine sandpaper, pressure points with water and heat, scratches and other damage are directly in the wood and not in the paint. In the case of bare wooden floors, moisture and moisture cause them to crack open when drying, possibly curl up or the plank bend.

Such a wooden floor may only be cleaned dry and is sanded down for thorough cleaning. Over time, it gets its own character through its use and UV radiation and always ensures a pleasant room climate.

Oiled wooden floors

An oiled wooden floor retains many of the positive properties of the untreated floor, but is somewhat easier to care for and less sensitive to dirt. Nevertheless, you should usually only clean oiled wooden floors dry and only in rare cases wipe them with a damp cloth, never a wet one.

Make sure that the mopping water contains a moisturizing additive that maintains the oiled wooden floor and does not dry it out. This can be an oil or wax, which is why special wooden floor cleaners always appear milky and cloudy. Even if such cleaners have a moisturizing effect, still only use them for damp wiping, never wipe soaking wet!

If you want to refresh the protection of the wood, you can also apply the cleaner undiluted with a soft cloth. This works like a polish, which gives the floor more shine. Caution: danger of slipping!

Limed wooden floors

Limed wood is beautiful because the lime emphasizes the grain of the wood and gives the wooden floor a noble, matt white surface. However, you should be aware that a whitewashed floor is not waterproof and that you wipe off the limescale effect when you wipe it with a damp cloth.

Such wooden floors must never even be wiped with a damp cloth, but always only have to be treated dry. Therefore, they are not suitable for living areas in which a lot of dirt accumulates, such as the kitchen or entrance area.

So if you use the right care when cleaning your wooden floors, you will enjoy it for a long time.