How to Vacuum Hardwood Floors
Cleaning your hardwood floors is an important aspect of having a clean home. Learning how to safely vacuum hardwood floors is important because you don’t want to mess up that beautiful floor, but you want to take care of it appropriately.
Surprisingly, regular vacuuming is recommended as part of maintaining a well-kept hardwood floor. This is a part of life, and you want to be careful to follow a few basic steps, so that you have a nice clean home and floors, without ruining the floors in the process.
Hardwood Floor Cleaning
Hard surfaces and floors can be difficult to clean because the pet hair collects, or dust particles gather especially in high-traffic areas of your flooring. Clean hardwood floors are so rewarding, because they are beautiful to look at, and you can enjoy your nice clean home.
But how do you go about cleaning the hardwood floors without damaging the wood? Can you vacuum hardwood floors? What is the best way to go about cleaning your gorgeous hard surfaces?
Let’s take a look at the answers to all of these questions, and more, starting with the answer to can you vacuum hardwood floors.
Can you Vacuum Hardwood Floors?
If you have hardwood floors, whether they’re new, or old, you might be wondering if there’s a special cleaning solution you can use, or how you should go about taking care of your beautiful floors. No matter if they’re actual hardwood or laminate flooring, you want to be careful of how you take care of them.
Can you vacuum hardwood floors with a regular vacuum? Yes, you should regularly vacuum your floors; but, before you go about vacuuming your hardwood floor, there are a few specific things that you want to do, before using your vacuum on your hardwood floor.
Let’s look at what your daily and weekly cleaning routine should resemble when you have a hardwood floor, or laminate flooring in your home.
Daily Cleaning Routine
Each day it’s a good idea to go over your hardwood floor with a microfiber dust mop. Using a dry mop each day will help to clean up any dirt, dust, or pet hair that is on your floor. This will help you to enjoy a clean floor on a daily basis, and the best part, it only takes a few minutes.
You can find many different types of dust mops that can help to clean your high-traffic areas. My personal preference is to find a dust mop with reusable microfiber pads. This way I don’t have to continually buy new cleaning pads and can simply wash them and reuse the same pad.
Cleaning your hardwood floors, or laminate floors with a dust mop every day is a great option to stay on top of the dust, and pet hair. You can then consider vacuuming the floor, usually about once a week, for extra deep cleaning. This way you can suck up any remaining dirt, that your dust mop did not catch.
There are so many different types of vacuums available on the market today, so what type of vacuum is best for a hardwood floor. When vacuuming a hard floor, you will want to use a vacuum that has a hard floor setting, and that allows the brush roll to rise and lower.
This way when you use a vacuum to clean your hardwood floors, you can turn the brush roller off, and raise the vacuum brush so that you are basically sucking up any debris on the floor without scratching the hardwood floor.
Hardwood Floor Vacuum
There are many different types of vacuums, so what is the best type to use for wooden floors? You want to look for a high suction power vacuum, that has the ability to turn the roller brush off. This will prevent your vacuum from scratching the beautiful floor.
Canister Vacuums
Canister vacuums are the basic type of upright vacuums, that you might picture when it comes to your average household vacuum. These have a power cord, that plugs into the wall, with a canister that you can empty after each time you sweep the floor.
This type of vacuum usually works on your hardwood floor, but you will want to be sure that it has the ability to turn off the brush rollers, and only suck the dirt up.
Cordless Vacuum Cleaner
Using a cordless stick vacuum, such as a Dyson Omni glide, or Samsung jet are another good option, my personal favorite is actually the Ryobi Brushless Stick Vacuum. You will also want to make sure that these vacuums have the option to turn their rollerblade off so that they can vacuum a hardwood floor.
These cordless vacuum cleaners are starting to become available, in many different brands, and sizes. Make sure to do your research, to see which one will work best for you.
Robotic Vacuums
Using a robotic vacuum, to sweep your hardwood floor is another great option. Robotic vacuums can maneuver easily on your wood floor and are known to not scratch the hardwood floor. This makes them an ideal option if you are looking for a hassle-free way to clean your hardwood floors.
Handheld Vacuum
Handheld vacuums on the other hand are not an ideal option to vacuum your hardwood floors. They are very labor intensive and typically do not have the option to turn off the brush.
The best purpose for a handheld vacuum is to use it when cleaning stairs, or vehicles. It is not ideal for cleaning floors.
Battery Operated Vacuum
I recently got a new vacuum from Home Depot. It is a power tool vacuum, that is very lightweight, and has a decent battery life, so you can vacuum a small house on a single charge. If you’re looking for an affordable option, this was a very affordable vacuum, they can be used for cleaning hardwood floors.
The Best Vacuum Choice?
If you’re looking to replace your current vacuum, the best choice is to find a vacuum where you can move the rotating brush up and down, and have the option to turn the rotating brush on and off. This allows you to be able to suck up any dirt, without having the brushes scratch your hardwood floor.
How to clean liquid spills on a hardwood floor?
It’s so tempting to vacuum up liquid spills with a vacuum, however under no circumstances do you want to do this. Vacuuming up any kind of liquid with a household vacuum could end very badly. The results could be simply ruining your vacuum or electrocuting yourself. Under no circumstances do you ever want to vacuum up anything liquid with your vacuum.
Can you mop hardwood floors?
If you are considering wet mopping a hardwood floor, I would caution you to be very careful. Too much water can seriously harm your hardwood floor. You can use a lightly damp mop, or other options such as a steam mop with clean water or spray mops like a Swiffer wet jet.
If you have to squeeze out excess water from the mop, then there is too much water, and you’re likely to ruin the floor. Instead consider using a damp mop, or damp mop pad, to gently clean hardwood floors.
Type of Floor
We have been referring to hardwood floors, but really these tips and tricks to vacuum and clean hardwood floors are applicable, for all types of hard floors, including laminate flooring, tile flooring, and other types of hard floors, that do not have carpet.
The Most Important Aspects to Keep in Mind
On a daily basis, you should use a microfiber dust mop to clean hardwood floors. Occasionally it’s okay to vacuum hardwood floors, as long as you have a vacuum that the roller brush can be turned off, and the brush can be raised and lowered, resulting in only using the powerful suction to clean non-carpeted flooring. The best vacuums to use on a hardwood floor, are going to be the kind that only sections well over hardwood.
How to Vacuum Hardwood Floors
The best way to clean hard floors is to dust mop every day.
In between, you can occasionally mix in vacuuming hardwood surfaces, as long as your roller brush can be turned off, the brush roll raised, and only a strong suction is used to suck the dirt off of the hard floor.
Intermittently, you may also want to use a damp mop to clean the hardwood floor surface. Make sure that you are using a cleaning solution that is safe for hardwood floors, in the air not applying too much water. A great solution is to use a dry mop, with the spray nozzle attachment so that you don’t use excess water.
Other things to Vacuum
While you have your vacuum out, you may want to sweep up the carpet, so that you can enjoy a clean carpet in addition to your hard floors, and vacuum any area rugs, to keep them nice and clean as well.
Vacuuming Hard Floors: Best Practices
Although you can vacuum hard floors, it’s best to be careful when doing so, and only use a vacuum that suctions up the dirt, rather than using a roller brush to pick up any debris on the floor. Intermittently, you will want to use a dust mop, to sweep up any pet here, or dirt on the floor.
I hope that this has helped you learn the best practices for how to vacuum hardwood floors so that you can have a nice clean house!
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