General Care and Maintenance for your laminate flooring

Maintenance

Cleaning instructions for PERGO floors
One of the many advantages with floors from PERGO is that they are easy to keep clean and beautiful. To make the cleaning even easier and better PERGO also offers cleaning products specially developed for laminate floors. By following these simple cleaning tips you will enjoy your PERGO floors for many years to come.

Ordinary cleaning
Vacuum (without the beater bar) or sweep the floor using the PERGO mop to remove dirt and dust. Occasionally wipe with a damp PERGO cloth.

Removing ordinary stains
1. Spray PERGO Floor Cleaner directly on the stains/spillage.
2. Let Floor Cleaner dissolve stains for a few minutes
3. Clean the floor with damp mop (using only water)
Your PERGO floor should not be waxed or polished. Never scrub with steel wool or any other coarse material as this may effect the appearance of the texture

Different textures sometimes require special cleaning. Here are some simple tips for different textures. If your PERGO floor has any of the following textures please follow the tips below for best results.

Matt textures (ex. PERGO Naturaltouch)
In general, dirt sticks harder to floors with matt textures. Therefore, we recommend that you clean the floor more regularly and use PERGO Floor Cleaner on the entire floor/area to dissolve dirt stuck to the surface. A greasy looking surface can occur if you have cleaned the floor in the wrong way by for example using too much detergent or the wrong detergent like soap. To remove this film Spray ample PERGO Floor Cleaner over the whole floor and wait a few minutes for the detergent to dissolve the dirt/grease. Damp mop the floor and dry mop afterwards. Repeat this procedure until the dirt or greasy film is removed.

Polished texture (ex. PERGO Exotic)
Dried watermarks are often more visible on polished textures. Therefore, for best results, always wipe with dry mop after damp cleaning.

Floors with bevelled edge (ex. Pergo Expression)
Floors with bevelled edges are more sensitive to water since the bevel acts as a pocket where water can collect. Never wet-clean the floor. Cleaning with slightly damp mop (very well wrung mop) is possible occasionally but make sure no water is collected in the bevel. Always dry mop floor immediately.

The above Information was Source from Pergo's Web Site 2010

Click Here for a direct link to Pergo's Cleaning Advice Page

Further Advice on Cleaning laminate flooring.

General cleaning and care advice from John Chappell Technical Services.

The best way to keep your laminate floor looking its best is to understand its limitations. You must follow the maintenance
techniques and schedules from the manufacturer of the flooring you have purchased.

Since the inception of laminate flooring, ease of maintenance has been one of its largest assets. Due to the composition and construction of the product, as well as the extremely hard Aluminum Oxide wear layer (top layers), laminate flooring is perhaps the easiest type of flooring to maintain.

General daily maintenance requires vacuuming, sweeping and dust mopping. Several generic cleaning solutions are also available to clean laminate floors. Most major laminate flooring manufacturers have their own cleaning kits with instructions. Most kits contain a flat cloth mop and a spray-on cleaning solution. The cleaner is best sprayed onto the mop-head and then the floor is wiped clean. It is very important that you follow the maintenance schedule of the product you purchase. Ask your retailer or manufacturer on the specifics of maintaining your floor. All of the manufacturers warranties require a specific maintenance schedule to be followed.

Laminate floors are fade, stain, dent, burn and scratch resistant. However, it is still possible that you may end up with a scratch, chip or dent that will require repair. Laminate flooring is very tough, but it is not 'bullet proof'. Laminate flooring is still classed as a wood based flooring, please treat it like one.

There are a range of flooring laminate putty's which can help mask any small chips in your flooring however, they will not cover or hide scratches. Scratches will fade a little with use of the flooring depending on how deep, with proper advice and cleaning equipment, you can reduce the risks of damaging your flooring and keeping it looking new.

While laminates are meant to stand up to wear, they keep a new look if you follow this simple advice.

• Vacuum or sweep the flooring to remove loose dirt or grit
  (*** Caution - do not use any vacuum's with a rotating beater bar - hard floor attachments only).
  Whilst many laminate flooring manufacturers actually say you can use vacuum's with hard floor attachments, we recommend you only use a soft brush to clean the surface grit and dirt away prior to dry mopping. We have found that if your flooring is suffering from a lot of grit particles on the floor you do risk the chance of some of this grit getting onto the wheels of the vacuum, and whilst dragging or pushing the vacuum around the floor, it is possible that a piece of grit can stop some of the smaller wheels found on today's vacuums from going around, this will result in a scratch on your laminate floor.
  
  
• Flat mop, using the laminate manufacturers cleaning solution. Spray the cleaning solution onto a DRY flat mop with a microfibre
  cloth, do not saturate or over wet the mop. The mop should not leave moisture behind the mopped area cleaned, this
  should be almost dry. If your laminate flooring has a wood grain type finish, the flooring should be mopped in the same direction as the grain. (Most laminates have an impressed grain affect in the wear layers on wood type finishes) cleaning in the length of these grains helps bring back the luster of the flooring, only microfibre cloths can get into these impressed grains, cleaning across the grain is not as affective.
  
  
• Never use polish, varnish or wax. Most laminate flooring have a pre-finished wear layer, this never needs further treatment, only correct cleaning. There are many aftermarket (generic) laminate floor cleaners on sale today, many of these cleaners can actually lead to more damage to your laminate flooring over a long period of time. Many of these aftermarket cleaning products have glossing agents in them, designed to offer your flooring a glossy clean sparkly finish or have soap included in there make up. Glossing agents will actually make your laminate flooring appear patchy, as you use the flooring the walked upon areas fade as the glossing agent wears off quickly, then your have to constantly keep glossing your floor to keep it looking good, this is classed as a polish and the manufacturers can and will invalidate your warrantee as a result if these products are used, so be warned. The glossing agents and soaps found in many after market cleaners often cause the flooring to become sticky and this will cause the flooring to attract dirt rather than repel it. More dirt on your flooring will lead to more scratching with time.
• Never clean with abrasives, scouring powder or steel wool.
  
• Wipe up spills / liquids immediately.
  
• Avoid allowing any liquids to stand on your floor - including your pets water bowl.
  
• Grit is the primary enemy of laminate floors. Install proper barrier mats at your outside doorways (see below).

Protection advice for you laminate flooring

Never drag any unprotected furniture or heavy items across your floor. Install 2 -3 mm felt on the bottoms of all of your furniture, especially tables and chairs.(Felt protection available from this site Click Here >>). Whilst the furniture legs may not directly damage your floor, grit building up and trapped between the floor and the hard furniture legs / bottoms will cause a lot of light scratches. Installing the felt layer between these two hard surfaces gives the grit somewhere to go rather than getting pushed into your laminate flooring.

Install proper barrier mats. It is essential that proper door mats are used at every entrance and exit of your home. A good system is to have a coir or Astroturf type mat on the outside to help remove grit from the treads of your shoes or trainers and then a rubber backed cotton based mat inside your doorways. This will reduce the transfer of grit and moisture onto your laminate floors.

Castors - Most manufacturers say in there leaflets that there floors withstand castors, what this actually means in many cases is that the castors will not leave indentations (like they do in carpets). Unprotected castors will damage your flooring, old metal type castors often found on older lounge chairs offer floor coverings a point load, often these are strained and at an odd angle or damaged, especially when you 'land' / sit in your lounge chairs, as a result this can cause indentations in your laminate flooring, and can even cause the break up of the surface layers. Plastic castors often found on office chairs come in many shapes and sizes, the composition of the plastic wheel (how hard it is) makes a dramatic difference to the affects it has on hard floor coverings. Often the plastic castors build up with grit particles found on every floor, these particles impress themselves into the plastic creating an abrasive castor wheel, this chair with use then becomes a mobile sanding machine and generally results in the failing of the laminate floors wearlayer. This is rarely a production fault and is a regular complaint from customers. This can be avoided if the correct advice is given. If you need to use an office chair on the flooring with plastic castors please use a flat office chair mat, or alternatively use a normal chair with felt protection on the legs.
Laminate floors are best protected against castors with castor cups, castor cups spread the weight of the furniture thus lowing the point load on the flooring however, it is very important to cover the bottom of the castor cup with a soft 2-3 mm felt backing as grit can still gather between the hard floor covering and the hard castor cup, installing 2-3 mm felt eases this problem.

Click Here for a link to Pergo's Cleaning Advice Page

Home