How to Clean Hardwood Floors: The Ultimate Guide

There’s nothing like the warmth of real hardwood floors. They’re as beautiful, versatile, welcoming, and timeless as trees themselves, and they’re becoming far less common in new construction — for good reason. If you want your hardwood floors to outlast you, you’ve got to take good care of them. And your first line of defense is proper maintenance.

If you have hardwood floors, they’re most likely composed of standard three-quarter inch planks of solid wood — oak, pine, maple, and cherry are common woods used in hardwood flooring.

Over time, the urethane sealer on hardwood floors wears away, especially in high-traffic areas, and needs to be reapplied. The National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA) recommends re-coating solid wood floors every three to five years and having them refinished every few decades or as needed.

Refinishing a hardwood floor involves sanding it down to the fresh wood and re-coating it with sealer. It’s an expensive, messy project that requires the skill and expertise of a professional — or very handy handyperson. In general, a hardwood floor can be refinished four to six times over its lifespan.

The good news is that hardwood floors are durable and easy to clean. Compared to their laminate and engineered wood cousins, though, hardwood floors are pretty susceptible to damage from high humidity, moisture, and the wrong cleaning products.

Here are the Three Golden Rules of Maintenance for hardwood floors:

1. Wipe up wet spills immediately.
2. Never use a wet mop or — horror of horrors — a steam mop on your hardwood floors. Regular exposure to moisture causes swelling and warping.
3. Never use conventional floor cleaners like Mop & Glo or Murphy’s Oil Soap on your hardwood floors. These and other cleaners leave behind oils, silicones, waxes, and other residues that dull the shine of the floor. Some will cause streaking or a milky coating that’s hard to remove. Some of these residues even attract more dirt — and worse, they make it impossible for a new coat of sealer to adhere to the floor later on, which means if your floors need refreshing, you’ll have to go the refinishing route.

Follow these recommendations from the NWFA to prevent damage and keep your hardwood floors lookin’ good.

Daily

Sweep or dust mop high-traffic areas every day. Even teeny-tiny specs of dust and debris cause micro scratches on the finish and dull it over time. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to run a dry microfiber mop over the most-walked areas of your floors.

Weekly

Vacuum your hardwood floor with the bare floor setting to remove dust and debris from the joints and pick up what your daily dust mopping missed.

Monthly

Damp-mop your wood floors with a cleaner formulated for solid hardwood to make them shine and protect them from scratches.

Scuff marks are easy to remove from sealed hardwood floors, and it’s a good idea to do it as soon as you notice the scuff — if you leave it alone for too long, it becomes more difficult to remove.

Each month, after you’ve cleaned your floors, inspect them closely for scuffs. Remove them one of three ways:

1. Dampen a microfiber cleaning cloth, and gently scrub away the scuff.
2. If that doesn’t do the trick, grab a pencil eraser, and gently rub the mark. Remove all of the eraser debris when you’re done.
3. Still there? Make a thin paste with baking soda and water. Dip a dampened corner of a microfiber cloth in the paste, and gently buff away the scuff.

If you find your hardwood floors still look dirty after cleaning them, they might need to be re-coated with sealant — or even refinished. Both tasks require a veteran DIYer or a professional hardwood floor contractor, but they’re worth the cost if you love impeccably shiny floors.

How do you get animal urine out of a hardwood floor?

Wipe up the urine as soon as you discover it, then use a damp microfiber mop to clean the spot. Rinse, and repeat. Word to the wise: don’t spray hardwood floors with urine deodorizers because they can damage the wood.

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