Luxury vinyl maintenance and care
When it comes to making a home look luxurious, luxury vinyl flooring is a great pick. It's low maintenance, durable, and beautiful. The question is, how do you keep it looking its best? With a few simple tips, you can keep your luxury vinyl tiles looking fabulous, for years to come. We've put together some great advice to help with cleaning LVT flooring, as well as some ideas for maintenance, so let's get started!
Top tips for cleaning luxury vinyl tiles
To begin, let's cover some quick top tips for keeping your luxury vinyl flooring looking clean and proper:
- Regularly sweep or vacuum your luxury vinyl flooring to remove any debris or dirt.
- It is best to use a damp mop or microfiber cloth.
- Never push or drag furniture around on LVT flooring to avoid damage. Lift any furniture that needs to be moved.
- Avoid using abrasive cleaners or scrubbers which can damage LVT floors.
- Using a mat or rug in high-traffic areas can protect your luxury vinyl flooring from scratches or scuffs.
How do you maintain luxury vinyl tiles?
Next, maintenance. Cleaning is only one part of the process to keep these floors looking as they should, but proper maintenance will make the work go further. You can help this process by choosing the right kind of LVT per room – a kitchen or bathroom would be a great spot as they're waterproof and come with an extra protective top layer. Planning ahead of time helps make some of the maintenance easier, so let's dig into the three key points:
- Placing doormats at all entrances to a home will help to trap dirt and moisture. Large doormats at main entrances will significantly reduce dirt from outside being spread around your home and onto your luxury tiles. The doormats themselves should be cleaned regularly.
- To keep your flooring looking its best, try to keep direct sunlight away from your LVT tiles. This will help slow or discolouring or the fading of the patterns and colour.
- Avoid using wax. As tempting as it can be to "reseal" LVT flooring, it can dull the appearance, make them slippery and actually cause further damage.
How do you repair luxury vinyl flooring?
Sometimes, floors get scratched. A hole appears after something is dropped, a shoe catches against it, furniture is dropped mid-move – the list goes on. Thankfully, thanks to the modular nature of LVT flooring, it isn't too hard to repair or replace the problem tile and get your floor back to its best self. Sometimes you won't even need to replace the tile – we'll go over how now!
Repairing your luxury vinyl tiles
- The main ingredient you’ll need for your repair is called epoxy resin, a clear liquid that will dry out to create a hard filling for the hole or scratch in your LVT.
- Next, to get the colour right, find an acrylic artist’s paint that matches the colour of the luxury vinyl tile that needs to be repaired.
- Mix the epoxy resin with the artist’s paint and place it in the hole or scratch you wish to fill.
Level out the mixture, removing any excess and then leave the repair to dry.
How to remove and replace vinyl flooring tiles
- Use a blow dryer or heat gun to loosen the adhesive under the tile which it holds it in place. This will allow you to remove the tile from the floor entirely.
- Then wipe the floor beneath the tile clean before replacing the removed tile with a new one that is cut to size and glued down in place.
- Make sure the new tile matches your existing flooring and align any patterns on the floor to achieve a professional result.
- Use a rolling pin or floor roller to ensure that the new tile sticks firmly into place and to prevent any air bubbles, lumps or bumps from appearing in the surface and causing a potential trip hazard.