In most homes, you’ll find tile floors in the kitchen and bathroom areas as they’re versatile, durable, easy to clean, and highly resistant to moisture.
While they’re great for residential use, floor tiles could still accumulate dirt over time. You’ll need to remove grime regularly to ensure that you keep them beautiful-looking and sturdy. Although regular mopping mostly removes the surface dirt on most tiles, there may still be deep-seated and stubborn stains present that only deep cleaning can effectively remove.
Deep cleaning is the process of thoroughly cleaning an area that requires extra hard work and stronger tools or chemicals. It aims to not only eliminate surface dirt but hard-to-remove cruds too. While this practice is commonly found on upholstered furniture, mattresses, and carpets, you’d be surprised to know that your tile floors could also benefit from a deep cleaning.
Do your home’s tiles need some extra care? Floor tiles deep cleaning might be just for you. To help you out, below are some helpful insights you can check out.
Hire A Professional Service To Carry Out The Deep Cleaning For You
One of the most guaranteed and best ways to ensure that your tile floors are thoroughly clean is by hiring a professional service like Summit Facility Services or other similar floor-cleaning businesses to do all the hard and physical work for you. This can leave you worry-free about damaging your tile floors due to incorrect cleaning, as you can guarantee that a professional can do everything with a breeze.
While they might be an added cost, the benefits and convenience professional deep cleaning bring to your home would surely be worth it.
DIY Deep Cleaning
Apart from hiring a professional, you can always try to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) tiles deep cleaning. This can help you save costs, learn a skill, and earn that unique satisfaction after seeing your tiles all clean and tidy. Below are some tips for cleaning your tiles deeply:
Identify Tile Type
Before you get your hands dirty during the deep cleaning process, you must purchase the right cleaning materials for your tiles. This can help prevent damage caused by incompatible cleaning agents.
Identifying your floor’s tile type can help determine an appropriate home cleaning solution. Some useful home cleaning solution examples include:
- For Slate Tiles – You can mix up mild detergent and water for an easy cleaning process. Avoid adding anything acidic, such as lemon or vinegar, as it can damage the slate’s surface.
- For Ceramic Tiles – For glazed (shiny) tile floors, you should mix mild detergent and warm water to keep them clean. You can add a teaspoon of vinegar to your unglazed (matte) tile floors to help remove any soapy residue.
- For Marble, Granite, And Limestone Tiles – Never use any acidic elements on them as they can cause damage to their surface. Ideally, you should use hot water and a pH-neutral mild cleaner to avoid discoloration. Ensure that you place them in spray-type bottles for even and soft distribution.
- Clean Off The Surface
As you identify your tile type and know what kind of cleaning materials go with it, you next need to clean off the surface. You can try sweeping the entire area with a soft bristle broom to provide gentle yet thorough cleaning or use a vacuum to limit physical work and let the machine do all the work for you. Just ensure that you thoroughly clean any loose dust and dirt off the tile surface to give yourself a blank slate to work on the deep cleaning process.
Remove Stains Immediately
After removing any loose dirt on your tile floors, you can now begin addressing any stains on your floors like wax, oil, paint, or pet waste.
Ideally, as soon as you notice them on your floors, you should remove tile stains as quickly as possible. Ignoring them can cause damage to your floors, along with leaving stubborn stain marks on the surface. In most cases, you can remove stains using an all-purpose cleaner. Yet for more extreme cases, you might need to change it up a bit, depending on the stain type.
For your oil-based stains, you should try using club soda and thoroughly rinse with warm water. Just ensure that you use a gentle blotting technique to avoid damage to your tile’s surface.
Meanwhile, for food stains, you might want to use hydrogen peroxide – the chemical is great for removing tough stains but is still gentle on your actual tile. You can begin by preparing a lint-free cloth and applying some hydrogen peroxide to it; then, carefully blotting through the stains. This way, you can focus your cleaning material on the discoloration and prevent them from touching your clean tiles.
Focus On Your Tile Grout
As you finish removing any stains and ensure that each tile is now stain-free and thoroughly clean, you can now begin working on your grout. This can help you achieve that satisfying feeling of finally seeing your entire floor clean and bright.
Unluckily, grout is extremely absorbent of dirt, grime, and grease, which can be unfortunate, especially if you’re working in the kitchen or bathroom.
While a sealant can help to prevent grout from absorbing dirt, worn-out or unsealed grout just calls for a dirty disaster. This is the reason why you need to look for the best floor tile installer to prevent any of these issues from happening. With that, you’ll need to get your hands on the floor and do some manual cleaning yourself.
You can use a small brush to clean your growth with your preferred cleaning material. Ideally, a used toothbrush to get in between their small spaces. This should also help you clean hard-to-reach areas and ensure every inch of your bathroom is spotless.
Mop Your Floors
After cleaning your tiles and grout, the next thing you should do is mop your floors to clean them for one last time.
While there are plenty of mop types that you can use, it’ll be the best option if you could avoid sponge mops as they’ll only distribute dirt on your tiles and force you to go back to square one. For the best cleaning option, you should use a flat, microfiber, or chamois mop as they can help to absorb dirt rather than distribute it around your home.
Manually Dry Your Floors
After mopping your floors, it might be tempting to air dry them to avoid doing any extra work. Nonetheless, leaving moisture on your tiles can damage the tile’s grout. Thus, soon after cleaning your tile floors, grab a lint-free cloth and dry your floors manually until you see no water streaks left on the surface.
Takeaway
Deep cleaning your entire tile floor can help to make your tiles look beautiful and extend their lifespan. While it might require you to do some dirty work such as manually removing the stains and grout of each tile, choosing the best type of cleaner for stains, and the like, the satisfaction you’ll get with a clean tile would surely be worth it. Yet you can always call for a professional service to make deep cleaning a lot easier and more convenient.
