How to Choose Hardwood Cleaners

A hardwood floor cleaner is important for maintaining your floors. However, you cannot just use any cleaner because you might end up doing more harm than good.

A hardwood cleaner is an essential part of floor maintenance. They are solutions that are used to clean up hardwood floorings, and are responsible for lengthening the life of the floors. However, you cannot just use any hardwood floor cleaner. There are some considerations that you have to take in before choosing your hardwood cleaners.

Tips to Choosing a Hardwood Cleaner

• Bleach is considered harmful and harsh to your hardwood floors. One effect of using bleach is that the finish is eaten away. Thus, you get a dull colored look on your floors. Plus, a bleach-based hardwood cleaner will make your floors look old.
• Use a specific hardwood cleaner if you have hardwood floors with an oily finish. If you use cleaners that are not recommended for those types of hardwood floors, then you risk damaging the finish. The wood of the actual flooring may also be damaged by the wrong type of cleaner.
• Do not use vinegar if you plan to use a homemade hardwood cleaner. Vinegar is a mild acid, and acids also eat away at the lacquer finish of your hardwood floors.

As you could see above, the main consideration in choosing hardwood floor cleaners is to maintain the aesthetic quality. In reality, you are not cleaning the actual wood flooring. You are performing maintenance to clean the finish. Thus, it is important to know if the hardwood cleaner you are considering using will be beneficial to the finish.

Buying Your Hardwood Cleaners

Your hardwood cleaner can be typically bought at any home improvement store. As an alternative, you can also search for them online. There are many brands of hardwood cleaners available. They can be bought online, and all of them are effective at cleaning floors. Here are some examples.

Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner

The Bona brand of hardwood cleaners come in a 32-ounce spray bottle. This cleaner is designed for hardwood floors that have a polyurethane finish. It is also ideal for wood floors that have been pre-finished in the factory.

This Bona hardwood cleaner is typically useful against stains from red wine, dried spaghetti sauce, mustard, ketchup and heel scuffs. Since the aim of floor maintenance is to maintain the finish, the Bona cleaner leaves no oily residue and does not use compounds that can attack the finishes of your hardwood floors. It also claims to be environmentally responsible. The cleaner is non-toxic and very safe to use.

Bruce Dura-Luster No Wax Cleaner

The Bruce hardwood cleaner also comes in a 32-ounce spray bottle. Like its name suggests, it has no wax that will leave a residue in your hardwood floors. Like the Bona cleaner, the Bruce no-wax floor cleaner prevents dulling and wearing away your floor’s finish.

This cleaner is also sold as part of a kit. This kit includes the cleaner solution, a terry cloth mop cover, a gallon of the Clean n’ Strip cleaner designed specifically for Bruce hardwood floors that have a wax finish, and a gallon of wax.