Steps for Maintaining Your Walnut Engineered Flooring

Maintaining your walnut engineered flooring can be somewhat easy if you take the time to keep up with the cleaning and care. There are several easy preventive measures and maintenance steps that don’t take much effort. If you have an older wood floor, you may need a little more to keep it looking like new. Walnut engineered flooring should not be regularly sanded, because of its layered makeup.

Preventive Measures for Walnut Engineered Flooring

One of the ways to best protect your walnut engineered flooring is to use rugs or mats by high traffic areas, such as doorways or by sinks. This way, you’ll keep dirt, debris and water from damaging your walnut flooring. Make sure to shake out your rugs and sweep on a regular basis, because if too much dust or dirt builds up in the rugs, it can scratch the surface of your floor.

Clean up any liquid spills on your walnut engineered flooring as soon as they occur. Engineered flooring is generally very durable and can withstand certain amounts of water and humidity, but prolonged exposure to liquids can damaged the surface.

If you don’t have area rugs in the rooms where you have walnut flooring, you should be careful about what kind of shoes are being worn in the room. If you have someone tracking in mud on boots or pets tracking in mud, you might want to have a place to wipe their feet or take off shoes when they come into the room. Stilettos can also damage the surface of the wood.

Regular Cleaning

Frequent cleaning is one of the best ways to maintain your walnut engineered flooring. Sweeping daily can keep dirt and debris from being tracked around and scratching the surface. Using a vacuum can get any dirt and dust from crevices where it can’t be swept out with a broom.

Purchase an engineered wood floor cleaner from your local hardware store or home improvement store. Use a dust mop or microfiber mop to clean the floors on a weekly basis to keep their shine. Remember not to leave any liquids on the surface of the floor for an extended period of time.

Buffing and Sanding

Minor scratches can be fixed with a floor repair kit or wax kit. Pouring a bit of wax in scratches and finishing them to match the walnut can be a great way to deal with single scratches. Even using a crayon that matches the walnut finish can fix minor scratches temporarily.

If your walnut engineered flooring is in poor shape, because it has experienced traffic for a number of years, you might want to considering buffing or refinishing the floor. You can rent a buffing machine or a sanding machine from your local hardware store. Sanding should be done on an as needed basis, since sanding can damage the wood veneer of your walnut. Applying finishes or polishes can make your walnut floor look as good as new and also increase its life span.