For Our Clients
Your Floor Care & Maintenance Guide
Your floors are new, and the first weeks matter. Here is how to care for the finish we installed, which products belong on it, and the rhythm that can keep this floor from ever needing another full refinish.
Right After Your Project
The First Days
A finish looks dry long before it is cured, and the first days decide how the next decade goes. If your project was a new installation or a sand and finish, these timelines protect your investment. If you had luxury vinyl plank installed, there is no finish curing and none of this applies: skip to LVP floors.
First 24 hours after the final coat
Socks only, no shoes, light traffic. European Collection floors want no traffic at all for the first 12 to 24 hours.
24 hours (water-based) / 36 hours (European)
Furniture may return with felt pads on every leg. Lift and place, never slide or roll anything across the floor.
Full cure: 3 days (Commercial) / 5 days (Residential, Eco, European)
Area rugs go down only after full cure, because rugs restrict airflow and slow the cure underneath. After full cure, normal life resumes.
Hold off on cleaning entirely until full cure. After that, the routine depends on which finish is on your floor, and the next two sections are not interchangeable.
The European Collection
Hardwax Oil Floors
If your floors were finished with Natura OneCoat, you have a penetrating hardwax oil. It lives in the wood rather than as a film on top of it, which is what gives the floor its natural look and its best long-term trait: it can be repaired in place.
Use Natura’s own maintenance products
This is the one rule that matters most on this page. Hardwax oil is maintained with the maintenance products made for it, which clean the floor and feed the oil at the same time. Your Care Kit arrives stocked with them, and refills are always available from us or direct from Natura’s wood care collection.
Do not use a standard waterborne hardwood cleaner on an oiled floor. It leaves a film on a finish designed not to have one, dulls the surface, and undoes the repairable quality you paid for.
- Weekly: sweep or vacuum without a beater bar.
- As needed: damp mop with the Natura maintenance cleaner, well wrung out. Never wet mops or steam.
- Scratches and dull spots: these are usually spot repairable, and the repair typically blends. Send us a photo before trying anything.
- Over the years: an oiled floor is re-oiled rather than fully refinished, which is why these floors so often never come back to bare wood.
Commercial, Residential & Eco Collections
Bona Waterborne Floors
If your floors were finished with Bona Traffic HD, Bona Mega ONE, or Bona Domo, you have a waterborne film finish: a durable, chemical-resistant layer sitting on top of the wood, protecting it. Care is about keeping that film clean and intact, and recoating it before it wears through.
Use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner
It is formulated for exactly this finish, and it is what comes in your Care Kit. Never use vinegar mixes, oil soaps, wax, polish, all-purpose cleaners, or anything promising to add shine. Polish and acrylic build-up is its own problem to remove later, and it is one of the services we get called for most.
- Weekly: sweep or vacuum without a beater bar.
- Monthly, or as traffic demands: clean with the Bona cleaner and a microfiber pad. Never wet mops or steam mops.
- Every 3 to 5 years: a maintenance recoat once traffic patterns start to dull, so the finish never wears through to the wood.
Luxury Vinyl Plank
LVP Floors
Your planks arrived factory finished, so there is nothing curing and nothing to recoat. Care is genuinely simple, with one firm rule.
- Weekly: sweep or vacuum without a beater bar. Grit dulls any floor over time.
- As needed: a microfiber mop with a vinyl-safe cleaner.
- Never: steam mops, wax, or polish. Steam forces heat and moisture into the seams and can damage both the planks and the locking system.
- Even on waterproof plank: wipe standing water at the edges and seams. The plank is waterproof; the subfloor beneath it is not.
More on the products and the process lives in our LVP Guide.
For the Long Run
The Maintenance Rhythm
With the right routine, a hardwood floor may never need another full refinish. That is the whole strategy: catch wear with a recoat before it reaches the wood, and the sanding becomes money you never spend again.
- Weekly: sweep or vacuum, no beater bar. Check felt pads and indoor humidity.
- Monthly: clean with the product made for your finish, and only that product.
- Yearly: a professional deep clean. We extract what routine cleaning cannot and inspect the finish before wear becomes damage.
- Every 3 to 5 years: a maintenance recoat, or a re-oil on hardwax oil floors, as traffic patterns demand.
The everyday rules
Felt pads on every furniture leg
Check them twice a year. A pad that has worn through or picked up grit becomes sandpaper under a chair that moves every single day.
Lift, never slide
Furniture and appliances get lifted and placed. Nothing rolls or drags across a finished floor, ever.
Mats at every exterior door
Grit tracked in from outside is the main thing that wears a floor. Stopping it at the door does more for your finish than anything else on this page.
Wipe spills promptly
Standing water is the enemy of wood, and it finds seams and edges even on waterproof plank.
Trim pet nails
Long nails scratch any finish. Regular trimming is quieter, cheaper, and far more effective than trying to buy a scratch-proof floor.
No cleats, no exposed heels
A heel strike can exert the same force on your floor as an elephant. It is not a figure of speech.
Hold your humidity at 30 to 50 percent
Wood lives and moves with moisture year round, not just during the project. Seasonal gapping and cupping trace back to humidity more often than to anything else.
When your floors are ready for a deep clean or a maintenance recoat, we handle those too. The full reference, with the reasoning behind every rule, lives in our Hardwood Floor Maintenance Guide.
Questions
Floor Care FAQ
It depends on your finish, and using the wrong one is the most common way a new floor gets damaged. Hardwax oil floors (our European Collection, finished with Natura OneCoat) use Natura’s own maintenance products, available at naturaonecoat.com/collections/wood-care. Bona waterborne floors (Traffic HD, Mega ONE, Domo) use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. LVP uses any vinyl-safe cleaner. Your Care Kit arrives stocked with the right product for your floor, and refills are always available from us.
No, on any floor we install. Steam forces heat and moisture into the wood, the seams, and the finish. It is the single fastest way to ruin a floor that would otherwise last decades. The same goes for wet mops, vinegar mixes, oil soaps, and all-purpose cleaners.
After full cure, not before. Rugs restrict airflow and slow the cure underneath, which can leave the finish soft in exactly the areas you cover. Full cure is 3 days for the Commercial Collection and 5 days for the Residential, Eco, and European Collections.
Usually not. Hardwax oil floors are the standout here: they can be spot repaired locally and the repair typically blends, because the oil penetrates the wood rather than sitting on top as a film. Waterborne finishes are a film, so repairs are done by recoating an area or a room. Send us a photo before you try anything, and we will tell you honestly what it needs.
Before the wear reaches the wood, which is the entire point. Traffic patterns dulling in front of the sink, the door, or the stairs is the signal, typically every 3 to 5 years depending on how hard the floor lives. A recoat is a fraction of the cost of a full refinish, and catching it in time means the sanding is money you never spend again.
It extracts built-up grime and residue that routine cleaning cannot lift, and it gives us a look at the finish before wear becomes damage. It is also when we tell you where you actually stand on a recoat, rather than guessing from a calendar.
Ready to Get Started?
Schedule a FreeIn-Home Assessment
Serving Clayton, Garner, Raleigh, Cary, and communities throughout Johnston, Wake, and Durham Counties. We respond within one business day.
After you request an assessment, we review your project details, confirm your location, and schedule an in-home visit. You will receive a written proposal with the scope, products, timeline, and warranty clearly explained.
Want to see our work first? Browse the portfolio →