Tales from the Floor: Shiny Floors

The request comes in “customer states floor smudges, trouble cleaning”. The conversation with the customer reveals they have had trouble cleaning the floor or have seen smudges on the floor since they moved in, since the floor was installed, or since the cleaning service cleaned the floor.  

While at first it can be easy to blame the homeowner for poor cleaning of the floor, as an inspector, we will dive in further to see what is causing the floor to look the way it does. The more of these we’ve inspected, the more frustrating it has become as the consumer is usually using an approved cleaning product. At some point however, someone – maybe the consumer, sometimes the cleaning company, often the cleaning crew before move-in – used a cleaner that had a slight finish in it. Mop ‘n glo, Rejuvenate, and any other product that says it will give the floor a “like new shine” on it will put a finish on the floor. Unfortunately, so will some other approved cleaners. Any finish applied to the floor can change the appearance, but at the cost of having to continuously reapply it to keep it looking good.  

The way we check if there is a finish applied to the floor is by cleaning a test area first with a professionally formulated neutral floor cleaner or if necessary, clear ammonia

This usually results in clean spots on the floor that match the uninstalled piece of flooring. This indicates a finish was applied to the floor at some point after installation. Frustratingly for the consumer, they are left having to clean their entire floor with a robust professionally formulated neutral floor cleaner or clear ammonia coupled with brush agitation to clean off whatever finish was applied. 

We talked more about shiny cleaners and floors in this article: https://www.mark4floors.com/articles/shiny-cleaners-make-shiny-floors