Properly caring for your flooring is important to your health and the health of the carpet or flooring as well. You’ve spent a significant amount of money on the type of flooring you have, so you need to invest some extra time and money to keep it looking good.
Benefits of Proper Floor Maintenance:
- Protects your air quality: Airborne pollutants get trapped inside your flooring causing health issues.
- Easier to maintain: Dried soils will embed into the fibers or crevices, so a thorough professional cleaning provides easier routine cleanings.
- Protects the integrity of the flooring: Removing stains in a timely manner protects the flooring from further damage.
- Prolongs flooring life
- Enhances appearance
Vacuuming or mopping your flooring at least once a week, or more if you have children or pets, will help keep your flooring looking and feeling fabulous. Professionally cleaning your flooring should be done at least two times a year, more if you have a high traffic area.
How Often Should Flooring Be Cleaned?
Now that we’ve established that professional cleanings on your flooring provides many benefits, let’s look at how often you should clean them. And it must be said; vacuuming and sweeping is not the same as cleaning. Probably the biggest reason you should have your floors professionally cleaned is to protect your warranty.
And if you didn’t already know, indoor air quality is about eight to ten times as bad as the outdoor air when you don’t maintain clean carpets and drapery. In determining how often you clean your floors, you’ll need to take a few things into consideration.
The more people passing through your home or office, the more traffic you have and the more often you’ll need to have it cleaned that includes pet traffic too. Checking the warranty on your flooring will guide you on how often you are required to have your floors professionally cleaned.
Pro Tip: Instead getting a quote over the phone based on room size, ask for an onsite estimate based on the room size, flooring type, condition and level of clean you require.
Taking age into consideration will help you determine if a good cleaning will suffice or if it’s time to replace your flooring. You should have your floors professionally cleaned prior to seeing signs of aging, otherwise it may result in wear on your flooring or carpet.
Ask yourself these questions to determine if you should have your floors professionally cleaned:
- What is your foot traffic like?
- Do you have cats or dogs?
- What does the warranty require?
- What is the age of your flooring?
- What type of flooring do you have?
Flooring that experiences higher levels of traffic like office buildings or homes will kids and pets should consider having their floors professionally cleaned at least every six months. Floors that don’t have as much traffic can look at yearly or every other year, depending on where you live and what your preferences are.
Why Hire a Professional?
A quality carpet and flooring cleaning company will provide a satisfaction guarantee and that’s priceless. They also have the expertise and the knowledge it takes to tackle all types of carpeting and flooring. And they get the hard to reach areas that you can’t do alone – that, too, is priceless.
Pro Tip: Be sure to select a few different companies to interview so that you have something to compare to. And don’t forget to ask for references.
Your floor cleaning professional is also educated on stains and how to treat them and their equipment is top-notch and regularly maintained. Make sure you ask if their technicians are registered. The Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) maintains registering professionals in the cleaning industry.
Mistakes to Avoid:
When you clean your floors yourself, you’ll save money, but mistakes can be easily made that will have a negative effect on your flooring’s health. Using too much water can leave excess water to soak down into the padding of carpeting or flooring, causing discoloration, warping and breakage – not to mention mold or mildew issues.
Another mistake you may make is to not protect the furniture from the wet carpeting, which can leave dye stains or rust on your newly cleaned carpet. And many people don’t know how to clean other stains, let alone, stains caused by furniture.
Other stains that you may encounter when cleaning your floors include:
- Urine
- Vomit
- Mud
- Wine
- Coffee
Pro Tip: Find out what products and technology will be used by a professional floor cleaning company and get a written agreement that includes the total price, terms and conditions before hiring them.
Most flooring should last at least 10 years – sometimes longer, oftentimes people replace carpeting long before it’s necessary. Hiring a professional can bring the life back into those carpets and the same goes for tile, hardwoods and other flooring too. A quality floor cleaning company, like Allied Facility Care, can refinish your floors bringing back their freshness and beauty.