If you’ve recently ripped up some old carpets to find unfinished wood floors beneath, this can feel like opening an unexpected gift. With their natural and old-fashioned charm, unfinished wood floors are a treasure that is unmatched.
Yet an unfinished wood floor brings with it some questions and yes, some extra work. How can you keep your floor clean and shiny? Is it possible to mop the floor without getting it wet? Can you get spots and stains out without ruining the beauty of your floor?
The good news is that you can absolutely clean your unfinished wood floor without damaging it. It just requires a little extra care and attention.
Here’s how you can keep your unfinished wood floor clean and shiny for years to come.
How To Clean Unfinished Wood Floor
Make a Vinegar Solution
Unlike other types of flooring, unfinished wood floors can be damaged by the harsh chemicals in traditional cleaning solutions. For that reason, even professionals prefer to use a homemade solution for untreated wood. Vinegar is a great option because it is just acidic enough to cut through dirt and grime, leaving a beautiful, shiny look on your untreated wood floor. It can even penetrate those corners and creases where dirt often hides. Using vinegar also prevents mold and mildew from forming, an important consideration, since that can quickly ruin your flooring.
To create your solution, simply pour one cup of vinegar into a clean, empty bucket. Then add a gallon of water and mix it well. You can adjust this ratio as needed depending on how much cleaning solution you need. Remember to leave plenty of room in the bucket to put a mop in without spilling it; in general, you should only fill it about half full.
You can then begin to apply the solution using a mop. However, there are a few steps you should take before you begin.
Prepare the Floor
Before you begin mopping your unfinished floor, make sure the area is ready for cleaning. Your goal is to eliminate as many edges and corners as possible since these can be magnets for dirt and debris to hide while you’re cleaning. Remove any rugs, furniture, or other objects covering up the area you want to mop. If any of your furniture looks dirty, consider cleaning it before you get started on your floors. Examine the area carefully to ensure there aren’t any old nails, carpet tacks, or staples that may have been left in your flooring. It’s also a good idea to block off any doors into the room you are mopping so that people and pets don’t inadvertently enter and leave their messy footsteps while you’re trying to clean.
Sweep And Vacuum
Before mopping, you’ll want to get rid of any loose debris on your wood floor by sweeping and vacuuming. These loose particles, if ignored, can scratch the surface of the delicate wood whenever anyone steps on them, causing lasting damage. So it’s essential to remove them before starting, as well as run the vacuum or broom over your floors on a regular basis to ensure they remain dirt-free.
Of course, to keep your unfinished wood floors safe during this process, you should use a soft-bristled broom, and put your vacuum cleaner on its hard-floor setting. Your vacuum cleaner’s brush roll can hurt your flooring.
By vacuuming ahead of time, you can allow the vinegar solution to penetrate the floor more deeply, giving it a more lasting shine. In addition, vacuuming your wood floor regularly reduces the need to deep clean, so you won’t have to do it as often.
When you sweep, use a fluid motion, extending the broom in front of you and pulling it towards. Begin with the edges and corners of the room and work your way to the center. Don’t forget to give special attention to the area around and under your baseboard heaters, as dust and dirt often get trapped there.
Start Mopping the Floor Surface
Now you’re ready to begin mopping the floor with your vinegar solution.
First, remember to use a flat microfiber or a microfiber twist mop, and keep it damp, not wet.
Start by softening your mop head by placing it in the bucket for a few minutes. Then twist it or slide it against the dryer bar until it’s almost dry.
Mop the floor in an “S” pattern and be sure to dry the floor as quickly as possible afterward, using either a microfiber cloth or a ceiling fan. And always mop in the same direction as the wood grain. Start from a corner of the room and work your way towards the door. It can be helpful to divide the room into sections, drying with your cloth or a fan as you go. You’ll need to change out the water in your bucket whenever it becomes too dirty. A good rule of thumb is to change it whenever it becomes so dirty that you can’t see the bottom of the bucket.
Clean Unfinished Wood Floor with Trisodium Phosphate
Trisodium phosphate (TSP) can be helpful for either spot-cleaning or deep-cleaning an unfinished wood floor. You can sometimes find it in liquid form, but usually, it comes as a powder. Prepare your solution by dissolving half a cup of TSP in a gallon of hot water. It’s best for the water to be hot so that the TSP can dissolve and evaporate quickly once applied to your floor. That way, you can keep potentially damaging excess water to a minimum.
If you are using this solution for a deep clean, you’ll want to prepare by removing any objects or furniture from the floor’s surface and barricading the room against children and pets.
If you’re just spot-cleaning a stain, all you need to do is apply about a teaspoon of the TSP solution to the stain, and then scrub it with an old toothbrush.
Use Mineral Spirits
Mineral spirits are also great for cleaning unfinished wood floors. They are a petroleum-based substance that works very well to remove tough stains like paint. But be careful: the fumes from these are toxic and flammable. You’ll need to wear a respirator and a mask and open all the windows to ensure adequate ventilation as you work.
Then simply spray or sprinkle a small amount of the mineral spirits on the wood floor and rub it gently with a non-abrasive scrubbing pad or a microfiber cloth until the stain lifts off. Then use a smooth clean rag to wipe up the excess and leave it to air dry. Do not use anything rough or coarse with mineral spirits because that may damage your floor.
Keep in mind that if any wax has been previously applied to your floors, treating them with mineral spirits will remove that.
Protecting an Unfinished Wood Floor
After you’ve cleaned your unfinished wood floor, you’ll want to do everything you can to keep it smooth and shiny going forward. A great way to do this is by applying paste wax. Simply rub it into the floor in a clockwise motion, and let it air dry, and then buff it with a floor buffer. (You can often find these for rent at home improvement stores.)
Another way to protect your floor: use furniture pads. When placed underneath your furniture, these can protect your floor from scratches and dents.
Most importantly: never, ever allow anything wet or sticky to remain on your floor. Clean up spills and accidents as soon as they happen. Use a damp cloth and thoroughly dry the area afterward.
Keep any rugs that live on the surface of your floor as clean as possible. Take them out and clean them on a regular basis. And don’t allow them to sit on your floor wet; get them off the surface and dry them out before returning them.
Regular Sweeping and Vacuuming
The best thing you can do for your wood floor is limit how often it gets mopped or deep-cleaned. Frequent mopping can cause lasting damage. In fact, this is the most common way that wood floors get ruined. That’s because water warps the wood, and sometimes mold can begin to grow beneath the floorboards where you can’t see it.
The best way to reduce the need for this kind of damaging deep cleaning is by sweeping and vacuuming the floor’s surface as often as possible. This is helpful because it allows your floor to remain free of dirt and debris without getting any potentially damaging water on it.
You should try to vacuum high-traffic areas of your wood floor every day. If the floor is in an area that doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic, you can probably get away with doing this just once or twice a week. And your unfinished wood floors should also be swept once a week.
Besides sweeping, you might want to consider applying a static dust mop to pick up and remove any loose particles that might damage your floor over time.
Using Doormats
With your wood floors as with anything else, an ounce of prevention really is much better than a pound of cure. The best way to keep your floors looking great is by preventing any stains or dirt to begin with. A great way to accomplish that is by simply placing doormats on wood floors at all entrances. Make sure they are large enough to cover the entire area. These will take the brunt of all the dirt and debris that gets tracked in on people’s shoes, trapping it in the mat so that these don’t end up on your floor. It’s also a good idea to place runners and rugs on your wood floors in areas that get a lot of spills, such as the kitchen and/or the bathrooms.
Another benefit to doormats: they can eliminate that weird cracking noise the wooden floorboards can sometimes make in cold weather.
Spot-Cleaning When Needed
Whenever possible, choose spot-cleaning over deep cleaning. By simply dealing with spots and stains when they occur, you can postpone a wet and messy deep clean, allowing your floors to remain clean without mopping them. It is always better for your unfinished wood floor if you can avoid getting it wet. After all, your main objective in cleaning your floor is to remove unsightly stains; it’s not always necessary to clean the whole floor.
To spot-clean unfinished wood floor, you will need something stronger than the vinegar solution that you would use to deep-clean the entire floor. For this, the TSP solution described above will work very well. Use an old toothbrush to scrub out small stains. For larger ones, apply the TSP with a sponge and then scrub the stain with an old shoe polish brush.
This process is far less time-consuming than a whole-floor deep clean because you don’t have to do all the prep work of moving things out of the way and sweeping and vacuuming beforehand.
Making an Unfinished Wood Floor Shine
Your unfinished wood floor lacks that shiny glow that sealing and treatment give it. While we love the natural look of an untreated wood floor, sometimes it can look a bit dull. Fortunately, there are still several things you can do to give it that beautiful, shiny glow.
Try applying jojoba or linseed oil to your floor using a microfiber cloth or a soft rug. Simply rub it in and leave it for fifteen minutes. Then buff it with a dry mop to ensure there is no residual dirt left behind.
You might also try a petroleum-based, water-free wax. Rub it onto the floor with a soft rug, leave it to dry for thirty minutes, and then use a clean cloth to buff it out.
You can also make your own homemade floor-shining solution using a quarter-cup of olive oil and one-third of a cup of white vinegar mixed with hot water. This can work well because the hot water will evaporate quickly so it won’t sit around on your floor.
Either of these methods will leave your floor with a natural-looking shine while eliminating all those hard-to-clean layers of dirt, dust, and grime.
Cleaning unfinished wood floors the right way can be a time-consuming task. But the natural appeal that they bring to your home is more than worth the effort.
Conclusion
How to clean unfinished wood floor is a question that we are commonly asked. There are several ways that you can go about cleaning your unfinished wood floors and the method that you use will depend on the type of flooring that you have as well as your personal preference.
You can either sweep or vacuum your floors on a regular basis to keep them free of dirt and dust or you can mop them with a damp cloth. If you do choose to mop your floors, be sure to use a cleaner that is specifically designed for unfinished wood floors.
You should also avoid using too much water when cleaning your unfinished wood floors as this can damage the wood, and lead to gaps that you have to fix.