How to care for parquet at home?

For all its advantages, an elite and stylish coating has one obvious drawback - caring for a parquet board often causes too much trouble. Violation of the rules for processing the material leads to its rapid wear, failure to carry out the necessary manipulations is accompanied by a decrease in its decorative properties.

Experts say that a parquet floor will please you for a long time with cleanliness and attractiveness, if you follow the basic rules for its content. Before washing the parquet, it is necessary to establish its appearance, then the list of acceptable and recommended measures will be obvious.

Types of parquet and their specific care requirements

All types of expensive coating can be divided into two groups - raw materials coated with varnish and oil. Depending on the characteristics of the coating, parquet care is carried out:

• Varnished. In this case, wet processing is highly not recommended. Such a floor must be regularly swept and vacuum cleaned, only local pollution is treated with special means. Felt pads should be installed on furniture legs to prevent damage to the material. Caring for a parquet board covered with varnish implies its mandatory grinding and updating of the coating at least once every five years. Refusal from this stage leads to a thinning of the protective layer and darkening of the tree. In especially advanced cases even looping does not help, the floor has to be completely updated.
• Oil. Daily care for parquet coated with oil involves the use of a vacuum cleaner. In addition, regular wet cleaning is required, during which specialized ready-made and folk remedies are used. The update of the protective layer should be carried out at least once every six months, while such frequent preliminary grinding is not required.

Separately, you can distinguish laminated flooring. At home, dry cleaning and specialized sprays are used to clean and restore it. Contrary to popular belief, a steam cleaner is not suitable in this case.

How to clean the parquet: features of regular and intensive cleaning of the material

To know how to properly care for the flooring regularly, you need to understand that the main enemy of the coating is not local spots of various nature, but the most common dust.

If a single stain can be easily removed using a special preparation and this will happen quite rarely, then the fight against dust will take most of the time. Based on this, the experts identified the following rules for the maintenance of parquet, coated with varnish, oil or laminate:

1. Vacuum cleaner should be daily. In extreme cases, it can be replaced by using a slightly damp, very soft cloth or sponge.
2. To remove persistent local contaminants, it is forbidden to use abrasives and aggressive cleaning agents. The use of solvents and dishwashing liquids is also completely eliminated.
3. There is no such thing as regular spring cleaning. Parquet should be washed only as it becomes soiled. In this case, use soft rags, hair brushes, stain removers or paste for parquet.
4. It is worth stocking up with restorative remedies in advance. They are a colored paste, with which you can restore the floor covered with scratches.The product is applied to the damaged area, immediately remove the excess and leave to dry. Serious damage will have to be sanded and varnished again.

Tip: Caring for the parquet will become much easier if you put two rugs right and the entrance to the house - hard and soft. The first will collect all the dirt from the shoes, the second - excess moisture.

We must not forget that caring for parquet involves the creation of optimal conditions in the room. This temperature is in the range of 19-22ºС, humidity in the region of 60%, regular use of protective products. The main thing is that with all this, too much moisture does not get on the floor. Even during the washing process, it is recommended to apply water to the coating using a spray bottle.

The most effective and safe products that are recommended for parquet care

When choosing parquet care products, it is necessary to proceed from the quality of the coating and the type of contamination. At home, it is recommended to adhere to the following rules:

• Most stains can be washed off with water from the oil layer. Particularly resistant formations can be wiped off by adding laundry soap to the liquid. If contamination is not removed anyway, you will have to wash the parquet with a solvent-based cleaner. This should be a specialized product, even gentle compositions for processing fabrics can do harm. After such treatment on the damaged area, it is necessary to restore the protective layer. We apply special oil to the fabric, gently rub it into the surface first perpendicular to the fibers, then in parallel and leave for 12 hours.
• Cleaning parquet, varnished, at home is reduced to the use of a soap composition. In extreme cases, profile policies and cleaners for the varnish layer are used. It is best to use aerosols that are applied directly to the stain and immediately removed with a napkin. They will not only remove stubborn traces, but will also care for the floorboard. If a quality product was not at hand, you can do it with white spirit, the remains of which must be removed with a damp cloth.
• Grease stains from laminated flooring are removed with a special paste or laundry soap. Pure water will cope with everything else.

Only the observance of all these conditions guarantees the preservation of the functional and decorative properties of parquet for many years. Do not save on specialized tools, trying to replace them with dubious analogues. Caring for the material may not be the cheapest, but the end result will be worth it.