A Guide to Wood Cleaning Products

A Guide to Wood Cleaning Products Highly conditioned wood, whether floors, furniture, or accessories, can add a lot of appeal to your home. Like anything else, however, these surfaces need some regular maintenance to prevent drying, cracking, and fading. There are many wood cleaning products on the market to keep them looking their best.

Regular dusting or vacuuming is always the first step. Then, to determine which wood cleaning products to use, first consider the finish of the wood. Oiled finishes are soft, and cannot be waxed. This would cause them to dry out, so only use oil based products for these woods. Hard finishes, (which would include varnish, lacquer, shellac, and polyurethane), can be cleaned with oil soaps, multi-surface cleaners, and some other oils.

Lemon oil, olive oil, and tung oil work well. Also popular are combinations of products such as equal parts turpentine and boiled linseed oil, or 3 parts olive oil to one part lemon juice.

Oil soaps provide deep cleaning and will lift out old wax, grease, dirt and grime. One half to one cup of vinegar in a gallon of water will do a nice job, as well. Polishes provide a protective barrier. Because of this, they can also cause product build up, so using polishes (and waxes) are recommended only once or twice a year. The exception to this would be heavily used surfaces, which could benefit from more frequent attention. It is important never to use oil based cleaners on waxed surfaces, as the oil would cause the wax to become gummy.

Cleaning specific types of stains can be accomplished with ordinary household products.

White spots (like those caused by moisture from glasses) can be cleaned with toothpaste (paste, not gel). Mayonnaise works well to dissolve crayon marks. And finally, salt will absorb grease.

With a little knowledge and a few specific cleaning products, it should be easy to keep all your wood surfaces clean and shiny. Â