Cleaning Hardwood Floors With Vinegar: A Definitive No

Cleaning hardwood floors with vinegar is definitely not the best approach. Hardwood flooring installation is often an expensive proposition and you want to make sure you take care of it so it will look great for many years to come. Therefore, it is important to learn some do’s and don’ts to protect your investment.

There are three basic enemies of polyurethane finished hardwood floors, vinegar being just one of them.

Wax, Oil or Scented Hardwood Floor Cleaners:

The biggest misconception in the industry is that floor cleaners can restore a dull polyurethane finish to its original shine. This is simply not true. It is possible to remove a layer of dirt or whatever that has accumulated over time and reveal the original glossy finish if it is still in good shape. But the right hardwood floor cleaners are designed to NOT leave a residue on your floor, so you can only work with what you have in the first place.

Any floor cleaner that suggests it “shines” your floor must be leaving behind an oil or wax. It looks great on the day of the application, but it leads to future problems. It is difficult to remove and prevents the adhesion of new finishes if, in fact, you reach a point where you want to refinish your hardwood floor. It forces you into a highly labor intensive waxed floor maintenance regimen that your mother was always trying to escape from.

Water, the worst enemy of your soil!

Most floors today are factory finished. That means the finish starts and ends at the edges of each board. In the dry seasons of the year, your wood flooring shrinks, leaving pathways between the boards that allow water penetration. Therefore, it is strongly recommended NOT to wet mop a floor and risk leaving a puddle of water in these crevices which will cause your floor to swell and discolor. It is much better to use a terry cloth mop and spray a light coating of cleaner or water onto the mop or floor.

Vinegar, to do or not?

And lastly, should you use vinegar? Remember that cleaning a hardwood floor is about cleaning NOT WOOD, but the chemical finish of the wood. You know from experience that anything acidic will etch chemical finishes. Now I agree that vinegar is a very mild acid and today’s floor finishes are extremely hard, but when cleaning hardwood floors with vinegar, which is used weekly, over years of application, it will leave microscopic scratches on the surface that cause light to bend in weird ways. and reduce overall brightness. If there are better “neutral” cleaning products available, why take the risk?

Read more about the 7 Essential Maintenance Problems on how to clean hardwood floors to keep them looking beautiful for a lifetime.