Many home dwellers prefer to have a beautiful vinyl floor over every other kind of flooring plan. Putting the durability and cost-effectiveness aside, they are really an aesthetic addition to your home’s interior.
But what if we tell you how hectic people make it when it comes to cleaning the vinyl floor right away? Well, it doesn’t only fail to clean the floor but also leaves un-undoable damages on it.
If you’re worried about the same stuff, we’ve got your back with this comprehensive guide on how to deep clean vinyl floors in three different methods.
Seems enticing? Let’s jump right in-
What are Vinyl Floors?
Vinyl is a synthetic cousin of linoleum, which is massively used in flooring. While addressing vinyl floors, we directly point out the water and stain-resistant, durable floors that are made of vinyl.
Over many other types of flooring(i.e., Laminate, concrete), vinyl floors are way more preferable to many users. The main reason lies within its versatility, cost-effectiveness, durability, and aesthetic value that it carries out.
How to Clean Vinyl Plank Floors?
Today, I will share some tips for cleaning your vinel plank floors with vacuum, steam mop and regular mop. These are the best ways to clean this plank floors. Let’s see-
1. Clean vinyl plank floors with steam mop
Steam mops are one of the convenient tools to clean tough and dirty vinyl floors. But if you’ve got luxury vinyl planks, the heat exposure from steam mop might be harmful. So, you should careful when you will clean your vinyl planks floors with steam cleaner.
Step 1: Steam up the mop
First, set up the steam mop settings right. Start with setting the mop at half of its power. This will reduce the heat exposure to the luxury vinyl planks.
Next to the power, it’s the steam settings. For luxury vinyl plank floors, we recommend keeping the steam settings as low as possible. Avoid the scrub mode in the mop for the best output whatsoever.
Step 2: Prepare the floor
Take off the macro and large-sized specks of dirt by sweeping it with a cloth. In case you want to do it fast, you can use a vacuum as well.
Step 3: Prepare the cleaning solution
Now, take some warm water into a container or bucket. Mix a bit of cleaning detergent or liquid soap into it. In the absence of both of them, you can also use a cup of vinegar as well.
Once the solution is ready, dip the mop into it and rinse it for a while to drop the excess solution.
Step 4: Start cleaning with the mop
Now, mop the floor while it’s soaked with the detergent. You might need to use a cloth to dry the floor after you’re done with mopping. But beware of leaving the surface too slippery.
Read more: Using vinegar in steam mop
2. Clean vinyl plank floors with a vacuum:
Vinyl floors that are used quite regularly might come up with a necessity to be cleaning on a daily basis. As you can’t go and deep-clean it every day, you might go with vacuum cleaning to keep vinyl floor tidy.
Here go the steps of vacuum-cleaning a plank vinyl floor-
Step 1: Broom away the large debris
As long as it’s about floors, there is always some debris and chunks of large-sized dust that can be broomed away.
Before going with the vacuum cleaning, you need to get a broom and do a basic cleaning on the floor with it. Drop the stuff into the trash and move to the next step.
Step 2: Set the cleaner into hard floor cleaning mode
Now, it’s time to set the vacuum cleaner into the ‘hard floor’ cleaning mode. If your vacuum cleaner doesn’t have this mode directly, you might have to find something that’s one the same page. Some times, it’s labeled as the ‘bare floor’ in some models of vacuum cleaners.
In case you’re new to using a vacuum cleaner, take proper information on operating it right by the manual or the web resources.
Also, attach a soft brush to make the job of the cleaner easy. Once done, proceed to the next step.
Step 3: Start cleaning with the vacuum
Now, start cleaning the hard vinyl floor from one corner of it. Remember that the corners and edges of the floor are more likely to contain micro dust particles that the vacuum has to take in.
Make a mild pressure adjustment while going through the floor based on the level of dirt. For example, set it to high pressure while cleaning the door front or dusty corners.
Step 4: Empty up the dust container
Once you are done with cleaning the floor up, empty up the dust container of the vacuum. This will let you go with another session of cleaning on some different parts of the floor.
3. Clean vinyl plank floors with mop:
At this point, we are talking about dust mops or dry mops that are quite different from the steam mops that we’ve talked about earlier. The type of cleaning that you will get from this kind of mop is quite basic. But it’s still able to take care of most of the loose particles and specks of dirt. But in case of stubborn stains and molds, this might not be the best tool.
However, if you’ve got a dust mop to clean your vinyl plank floor, let’s proceed to the steps-
Step 1: Plan for the cleaning
This step of the process might sound dramatic, but it helps quite a lot. First, you have to split the floor(imaginary) and divide it into a number of sessions. Each of the sections should be able to be taken care of with one swipe of the dry mop.
Step 2: Start working sideways
Now, start from a particular corner of the floor and keep going sideways.
Remember, you need to apply a firm amount of pressure on the floor with the dry mop head. This will ensure the extraction of the maximum amount of dirt and dust from the floor.
Step 3: Keep checking the mop head for the dirt
After a couple of swipe, your dry mop is supposed to be contaminated with dirt and dust. If so, peel the surface debris from it using your fingers. This will make it ready to grasp some more dust and dirt into it.
Keeping to do so, make sure you are covering each of the sections we’ve talked about.
Step 4: Clean the mop well
Once you are done, it’s time to clean off the dry mop properly and make it ready to work over again. You can rinse the head of it and dry it well for enough time.
Vinyl Floors Maintenance Tips:
Once you are done with cleaning your vinyl floor with one of the three ways we mentioned, that’s not the end of vinyl floor maintenance. Including the cleaning, we’ve put together a shortlist of vinyl floor maintenance tips below-
- Clean up the spills from vinyl floors immediately without letting it be permanent.
- Wash the vinyl floor with non-abrasive cleaning agents.
- Don’t drag or push any heavy furniture through the vinyl surface.
- Don’t use vacuum cleaners with a beater bar.
- Maintain a regular routine of deep cleaning.
Conclusion
Alright, it’s time to wrap things up. The three ways we’ve explained on how to clean vinyl plank floors are all actionable. All it depends on is which kind of cleaning tool arrangement you have by you. If it’s one of these three, you can get right on the project of keeping your vinyl floor healthy and shiny.