What is the best product to clean LVF (Luxury Vinyl Floorings)? We are not flooring company but since 2010, we at Rejoice Maids have cleaned more than 5000 homes. We have cleaned many types of floorings. In the beginning of our business the predominant flooring we encountered was hardwood floors followed by laminate floors.
Lately, we have noticed more Luxury Vinyl Floors (LVF). With many varieties and colors. This type of floors is called Luxury Vinyl Tiles, Luxury Vinyl Plank, and Luxury Vinyl Sheets.
Luxury Vinyl Floors varies in style and durability. There are many options without maxing out your budget. Most are soft underfoot and essentially waterproof, which makes it a perfect choice for the kitchen or other high traffic areas such as den or living room.
The problem we see as house cleaners is how the manufacturers, distributors and sellers differ in their recommendation on what cleaning process is best utilized to maintain the cleanliness of the product. Some of the manufacturers have their own cleaning products that they sell to the consumer as the only cleaning solution to be use in the cleaning of their LVF. Other’s recommend using only damp mop. While some of the direct to consumer sellers recommend water and vinegar solution.
Buying a house is one big emotional investment. We hire professional real estate agents and home inspector to help us in the process. When the buying process is done we are face with task to properly maintain the house. One of them is the floors. If the house came with beautiful Luxury Vinyl Floors how we supposed to know which product to use to care for the floors? Ifthe floors came with the manufacturer floor cleaner, what happened when the product is gone? We don’t really see this type of situation in the beginning because it is such a small matter.
But it does happen. Our first instinct is to go out and buy. Guess what? In the store we are overwhelmed by the amount of floor cleaning products. We have discussion with ourselves, which one is the best? Sometimes we get lucky we find the right one. Other times,we get the not recommended floor cleaner and we buy the product because the image in the bottle shows LVF in it’s glory.
We all make mistakes. I wrote this piece because as professional house cleaners when we make mistakes in the houses we clean it is serious.We had encountered a challenged with LVF. One of our teams used Rejuvenate All Floors Restorer in a newly place no-shine LVF. It was an honest mistake and we took full responsibility for the error. The challenged was how do we remove the Rejuvenate on the flooring. I called Rejuvenate company and have spoken to a very helpful product expert. She had given us the proper instructions on how to properly remove the product on the floors and she assured us that Rejuvenate does not harm the flooring in any way shape or form.
The problem was the homeowner refused to let us use the Rejuvenate recommended process for removing the product. The homeowner insisted for us to use water and vinegar. Part of our responsibilities as house cleaner is to study and learn about the cleaning products we used in our daily work. Vinegar is one product mostly recommended by old fashion flooring distributors, and for some people vinegar is a miracle cleaning solution. The problem is Vinegar is high in acidity. Therefore, not safe to use in LVF.
To find an alternative solution we called five different Luxury Vinyl Flooring manufacturers. Low and behold, all five have one recommendation. The consensus was to use the process the Rejuvenate company expert have given us. Since it is their product.
Based on our unfortunate experienced, we learned we will never find the best cleaning solution to every type of Luxury Vinyl Floorings. We arrived at the conclusion that these LVF manufacturers have not allocated a budget to have an expert do research and development on cleaning products being sold out to the consumer to be used to maintain and clean their LVF.
The manufacturer pretty much leave the decision to the consumer to decide which product to use which is the right thing to do. However, we, the consumers need to apply due diligence to find the right product. And who has the time?Although, some manufacturer sells their own specific cleaning brand it is not easily available when needed.
A gap, the independent cleaning solution manufacturers fills in. Like Life Products, the manufacturer of Rejuvenate cleaning products. They have an expert adviser ready to assist consumers when needed. https://www.forlifeproducts.com/about-us/
Another independent floor cleaner manufacturer is Libman. This 120 years old family owned company makes products used for floor cleanings. They continue to do research and development to improve their products. https://libman.com/products/32oz-multi-surface-everyday-floor-cleaner
There are more out there. As I mentioned in the beginning too many to choose from but not enough information to know which one is best. Therefore, best advice is to contact the product manufacturer who formulated, researched and developed the Luxury Vinyl Floors.
Hard Facts:
1. Some floor retailers regularly advice consumer to use vinegar and water to care for the floors (hardwood floors, laminate floors, Luxury vinyl tiles and other types of floorings.
2. Floor retailers does not allocate budget on R and D of which cleaning product is best used to care and maintain the floors
3. Floor retailers does not have an expert on the staff to give consumer advice on how to best care for the floors after the purchase and installations.
4. Some floor manufacturer sells their own brand name floor cleaner
> Armstrong Multi-Surface Floor Cleaner
> Clean with product approve for vinyl flooring
> Mannington Award winning rinse free cleaner
> Shaw R2X Hard Surface Flooring Cleaner no rinse
> Tarkett No product recommended
