How to Clean Unfinished Wooden Floors [4 Ultimate Ways]
If you want to give your hardwood floor a stunning and attractive look, you must know how to clean unfinished wooden floors. At the same time, it’s essential to clean the wooden floor regularly for maintenance as well as keep them alive. However, it’s a great advantage for hardwood floor homeowners to give it a purely natural appearance.
Nobody likes an old and dirty wooden floor that makes them worse. But, in contrast, they have the opportunity to clean them easily. Furthermore, there are many disadvantages of having poor floors, such as they are very hard to repair and expensive as well.
By the way, cleaning unfinished wood floors seems easy, but they aren’t. You have to do some research and equipment such as
- Mop,
- Bucket,
- Water,
- Vinegar,
- Cloths or rags,
- Broom,
How to Clean Unsealed Wood Floors in 2022
Check out my 24 years of Woodworking database HERE
The unsealed wood means it’s not covered with a protective coating, so it’s the easy way to catch all types of dust and unexpected debris. Of course, there is a lot more to know about cleaning unfinished wood, like normal water can destroy your unsealed wooden floor, but you can do your best after following the guide on how to clean unfinished wood.
Vacuuming & Sweeping
Here I have chosen to vacuum and sweep in the first position for cleaning unfinished wooden floors. Let’s discuss why. In your house, you know where the main area requires regular cleaning. After determining the dirty place, you have to clean unfinished wood with Vacuuming and Sweeping.
First of all, you need to use a vacuum to clean the whole floor regularly. There are many hardwood ordinary vacuum cleaners available in the market, but you need to pick one that is specially designed for wood. Because some vacuum cleaners can damage your wood, so in that case, you have to clean the floor carefully.
Secondly, you can use mop for cleaning unfinished hardwood floors. It’s comparatively quite simple to use mop. You need to wet the mop with suitable liquid soap and sweep it on the floor. Again you have to be cautious about not damaging the wood.
Using Oil
If you don’t want to clean your hardwood floor regularly, you may apply the oiling method to cleaning unsealed wood floors. The oiling method requires monthly basis cleaning. There are many natural oils available in the market to clean the floors.
However, there are a lot of advantages to using oil to clean the hardwood floors. First, it can eliminate residue dramatically from the wood and give it a surprising look. Furthermore, you can’t use water or other cleaning liquid in this step because it will miserably destroy your floor.
You have to use soft cloth during the oiling and let it go for a while. After that, you should use a dry mop to clean the floor. That’s the process how to clean unsealed wood floors with oil.
Waxing Unsealed Wood Floors
The waxing is the perfect solution for unsealed floors. However, if you have no plan to seal your floor, you may try this cleaning method. Despite the advantages of waxing, it has disadvantages too.
If somehow you want to remove wax from the floor, it will leave a mark while getting off. So, it’s up to you what you are going to implement. However, before waxing, you need to pick up the best wax to get the optimal performance. At the same time, poor wax can miserably damage your floor. In fact, without petroleum based waterless wax, you can’t give it a professional look.
Furthermore, it would help if you oiled the floor and cleaned them before waxing. After that, you need to apply wax on the floor with a thin form and leave it for half an hour. In the end, you need to buff the floor with a clean rag or buffing machine.
For your kind information, waxing is a lengthy process to clean the unsealed floor. So, it depends on you whether you hire a professional or do it on your own.
Natural Floor Cleaning Method
To be honest, the natural cleaning method isn’t the ideal way to clean the dirty floor if you don’t have previous experience. As long as your floor is unfinished, you can’t do this every day. Also, you need to use water while cleaning; it damages the floor if you accidentally leave any proportion. However, natural cleaning is used to do extremely dirty wooden floors.
Different types of Natural mixing:
In this process, you need to make a natural mixing for cleaning unfinished hardwood floors. Below, there are four ways you can easily create a mixer in your home.
- One gallon or 4-liter water and 2 spoons of white vinegar.
- One gallon or 4-liter water and two-quarter lemon.
- One gallon or 4-liter water and baking soda one spoon.
- Here you can use other chemical materials like mineral spirits, paraffin, cycle propane, etc., but you need to make sure that it is odorless.
I assume that you have chosen any one of them and mixed well. After mixing properly, you need to use a mop to implement the natural cleaning. This is how the natural unsealed cleaning process works. In the end, I must say, you should be careful during the cleaning. You have to dry the floor while sweeping and make sure that there is no water left.
How to protect unfinished wood floors?
There are a few ways you can protect your valuable floors from being damaged. Check the below details:
- After cleaning every time, make sure that there is no dust, rocks, metal, or other heavy things left that can damage the floors.
- There is another interesting way to protect your hardwood floor. You can use carpets or rugs to prevent scuff, and it gives a mind blowing look to your floor.
- It will help if you are careful while moving the furniture because it leaves scuff that looks awkward.
- In the end, I must say, you should keep a shoe rack, be careful about pet animals, especially dogs, etc.
Conclusion
I have discussed several methods on how to clean unsealed wood floors. Hopefully, you will find any of them suitable and effective as well. But keep in mind that never leave water on the hardwood floor and always try to maintain it regularly.