Flooring Aftercare Guide

Remove loose dust and dirt from your wood flooring with a vacuum or sweep up with a soft brush.

Use Broadleaf Wood Floor Cleaner diluted as directed with warm (not hot) water and applied with a well wrung out mop. Avoid supermarket wood floor cleaning products which tend to contain high levels of alkalis and can damage your wood floor finish over time. Most are in fact only suitable for floors finished with lacquer or varnish and if you read the instructions on the back tell you not to use them on oiled or waxed wood flooring.

Don’t steam clean your wood floor – whatever it says on the steam cleaner instructions. This will damage both the timber and the finish, even if that damage is not immediately visible on high quality products such as our own. Unfortunately we speak to more and more people who have only noticed a problem after the third or fourth time that they have steam cleaned their floor. Most typically the floor begins to stain as the finish has effectively been stripped but in extreme cases the absorption of moisture can cause significant movement in the timber.

Use Broadleaf Wood Floor Wax to protect oil hardwax oil and wax finished wood floors, as well as to repair day to day scratches and signs of wear.

For lacquer and varnish finishes use Broadleaf Lacquer Refresher.

Simple and easy to use these professional wood floor maintenance products have been specifically formulated to repair and protect wood floor finishes.

For domestic use they will normally need to be applied every 3 months, although higher wear areas that are cleaned more often such as hallways and kitchens they may need more frequent application.

For commercial use, they should be applied more regularly depending on traffic levels.

If you have any questions about how to look after your wood floor, please contact one of our showrooms or send an email to our technical team. 

Wood flooring and wood finishes mellow in tone over time in response to light, just like fabric and paint. If you have rugs on your wood flooring, or pieces of furniture that block out the light, shift these slightly from time to time to help even up this process and roll back rugs when you go on holiday to give the area underneath a chance to catch up!

Wood flooring finishes must be fully cured before they are subjected to normal levels of traffic, cleaned, or covered with rugs / furniture.

All pre-finished Broadleaf wood flooring is fully cured on delivery.

Wood floor finishes applied in situ will normally dry sufficiently to be re-coated or walked on carefully in a matter of hours, but they will take longer than this to fully cure.

Please refer to the manufacturer’s recommended curing times for your chosen finish and do not hesitate to contact us if you are unsure.

Heat and humidity are crucial considerations when caring for wood flooring.

To avoid abnormal movement in your wood flooring, keep room temperature and humidity within normal living conditions after fitting.

These are an ambient room temperature of 15° – 24°c and relative humidity of 40° – 65°c.

If these are exceeded, correct them gradually.

If your wood flooring is fitted over underfloor heating the temperature beneath it must never exceed 27c.

Door mats can make a big difference to how well wood flooring wears and how often you have to maintain it.

To protect your wood floor finish and help keep maintenance to a minimum, place a dirt trapping mat in front of entrance doorways to catch dirt and grit from outside and prevent them being walked into the floor surface. We recommend using a coir mat, as it is one of the most effective at trapping grit.

Even better, have a matwell cut into your wood flooring when it is fitted, so that the mat doesn’t move or catch under the door as it opens. Matwells can be made to measure and edged in matching or contrasting timber as you prefer.

To prevent unnecessary damage to your wood flooring, fit felt pads or castors to items of furniture that move across the floor without being lifted such as chairs.

A wide selection are available so you should easily be able to find something suit any size or style of leg or wheel.

If you want to place rugs on your floor, roll these back from when you go on holiday to expose the floor underneath to light and give it a chance to catch up with the area around it to avoid noticeable lines.

If you have underfloor heating avoid thick rugs or those with rubber backing. These can trap the heat and raise the floor temperature above the industry maximum of 27°C. which can  cause excessive shrinkage of the timber and issues with adhesive.

Choose thinner rugs that will let the heat through easily – a simple way to check this is to lift the rug at intervals and make sure that the area of flooring beneath it isn’t warmer to the touch than the uncovered areas of flooring of close by.

Don’t let spills stand on your wood flooring. Although all of the wood finishes that we use and recommend are stain and water repellent, they are not entirely impervious and can be breached or damaged by spills left for extended periods.

In an ideal world we would recommend that all other building work is completed before you lay your floor, but we appreciate that this is not always possible.

If you do need to carry out other building works after your floor is fitted, we recommend that this is protected using Ramboard or a similar recyclable, breathable professional card floor protection. Do not use a plastic floor protection product such as Correx, as this will cause the floor to sweat underneath it which can damage both the finish and the floor itself.

Make sure that when floor protection is taped together (to prevent dust working its way beneath it and damaging the floor finish) the tape is only applied to the floor protection and not the floor.

Where underfloor heating is fitted under the flooring, consult your underfloor heating supplier prior to applying floor protection to ensure that this will not cause the floor temperature to exceed the 27°c maximum.

If possible have any decorating works completed before your wood flooring is fitted so that there is no risk of these causing damage. If this isn’t possible make sure the flooring is covered with a suitable protective covering while they take place. These products are normally supplied in sheets or rolls and taped together, so make sure that the tape is only stuck to the protective materials and not the floor, as the adhesive will be solvent based and will damage your floor finish.

Similarly, if skirting boards are decorated after your wood flooring is finished, do not use masking tape on the adjacent floor. Even the ones marked low tack have a solvent based adhesive that can damage a floor that is oil or wax based, and are not recommended in this situation if you read the detailed guidance on their use. Sliding paper under the skirting and painting to this is normally an effective alternative.