Cleaning Engineered Hardwood Floors with Vinegar and Water

Engineered hardwood floors have become a prevalent replacement for the hardwood floors. Many might think it is due to the high-price that people tend to skip installing hardwood flooring. It is somewhat true, no denying in that.

The Other Pretext

Contents

Another reason for people not installing hardwood flooring in their house even if they have the budget is the fragile nature and high maintenance. It cannot handle water, humidity, moisture, steam, and whatnot. If you want to use water or something liquid to ensure optimum cleaning, you will need an expensive, high-quality cleaning machine specially designed for cleaning the hardwood floor.

The Perfect Alternative

Even if you have installed hardwood flooring in every other room, because you love it and could do so, and buying an expensive cleaning machine is not a big deal for you, you cannot use it in your kitchen or bathrooms. These places have water all over. So, you need the alternative. And that one highly likable replacement is the engineered hardwood floors.

Handling Moisture

An engineered hardwood flooring handles moisture a lot better than the luxurious hardwood floors. It is a low maintenance flooring, doesn’t warp, bends, or stains just because you have spilled water on it or sweeping the floor with water. So, engineered hardwood floors seem way more practical and easy to maintain. You get the feel of wood but can enjoy a lazy cleaning day, which is never the case when you have hardwood floors.

Is Hardwood Floor not Worth it

Perhaps you are wondering if we are anti hardwood flooring. No, we are not. Hardwood flooring is one of the best flooring’s, at least, when it comes to style, elegance, luxurious feel, and uniqueness. That is why it has so many dupes in the form of tiles, vinyl planks, and our preferred engineered hardwood floors. Here, our prime motive is to make you realize how good and reasonable the engineered hardwood floor is.

Advantages

If easy cleaning, less costly were not enough, engineered hardwood floors need almost nothing extra to keep it clean and maintain hygiene. When it comes to cleaning tools and solutions, it saves you money. You do not need the high-quality cleaners specially made for cleaning hardwood floors, nor the cleaning solution that is so pricey yet doesn’t work full proof in no warping or bending the hardwood flooring. Engineered hardwood floors could be cleaned with few easy steps and all-natural products with a standard stick mop. So not just the installation of flooring, the cleaning process costs you way less.

Engineered Hardwood Floors and Cleaning it with Vinegar

cleaning engineered hardwood floors with vinegar and water
  • Save

Vinegar – The All Natural Cleaning Solution

Now, what is that easy-to-get all-natural product we are talking about? If you haven’t yet tried cleaning engineered hardwood floors with vinegar and water, then try it. Everyone knows how good vinegar is in cleaning dirt, stain, and grease. The stickiest, toughest, and stubbornest dirt and grimes are removed easily by using vinegar. It’s an all-natural product, not harmful for your kids, for the environment, neither for your engineered hardwood flooring. Moreover, it kills germs and bacteria. An all-natural product that ensures optimum hygiene, what more could we ask for.

Replace it with a harsh cleaning solution. It will be risky to put on the floor and remain there to set if you have kids in the house. Keeping a bottle of chemical solution is dangerous too. What if the kid finds it and starts drinking? You never know. Then harsh chemicals are not a pro-environment product. Last but not least, it will affect the engineered hardwood floor, no matter how high-quality engineered hardwood you have chosen.

Diluting Vinegar

To clean the floor, first, you will need a perfect ratio of water and vinegar. Vinegar is an acidic product, so it needs diluting. Never use vinegar directly on a surface. It works as a cleaning agent only after mixing in water. We use either white vinegar or apple cider vinegar to clean the flooring. Our suggestion to clean your engineered hardwood floors will be white vinegar.

A Cup in a Gallon

A cup of white vinegar at the max needs to be poured in a gallon of water. Depending on the stain or dirt, you can cut down the one cup vinegar into the half cup. However, a cup of vinegar and a gallon of water is the perfect ratio. Now you have your own cleaning solution.

Tips #1

Do the dusting of your engineered hardwood flooring. Due to the color, it might not look too dirty, full of dust layers. But trust us when we say, not dusting for a day is enough for your floor to collect a thick layer of dust. That is why those who have family members with dust allergy tend to dust the flooring every day twice.

Tips #2

Only dusting the floor is not enough. Make sure you are cleaning your furniture tops regularly as well. Not cleaning those and keeping those full-of-dirt will multiple the chance of more dust on the engineered hardwood floor. It is always better to use a standard broom rather than investing in a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner to clean an engineered hardwood floor will be a superfluity, in our opinion.

Tips #3

Dilute the vinegar by mixing it in one gallon of water. A gallon of water will be more than enough to sweep the engineered floor of a room. If you haven’t cleaned your flooring for a month or longer, then you might need more water. However, cleaning the flooring once or twice a week will need just a gallon of water per room.

Tips #4

Never use any abrasive tool or harsh fiber cloth or brush to clean the flooring. It will leave scratches on the floor. A regular stick mop that is easy to wring is all that you need. Though engineered hardwood floors handle moisture, that doesn’t mean you will start damp mopping the floor. Ensure you have squeezed all the excess water from the mop and then work on sweeping the floor.

Tips #5

If you want, you can let the vinegar water cleaning solution sit for 5-10 minutes on the stains so that they are easy to remove. But we will not recommend doing it throughout the flooring. A single pass of the mop covered with vinegar on the rest of the floor is the best way to make your engineered hardwood floor last way better.

In our opinion, any cleaning solution, no matter how mild it is, should be used carefully and to a limit. Vinegar might be safer, but overusing will turn it into a disaster. So, always try to keep the flooring dust-free, free of spilled water and food, do not roam all over the house with shoes that you wore outside, neither bring a wet pair of slippers out of the bathroom and create a mess. A little bit of cautiousness and empathy will help the person who works hard to keep your flooring clean.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Scroll to Top
Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap