Wooden floors give a room a touch of elegance and style that no other type of flooring can replicate. However, they are also delicate and can be scratched quite easily if not careful. We will discuss eight ways to protect your wood floors from scratches. Follow these tips, and your floors will stay looking beautiful for years to come.
1. Use a Rug or Runner
Rugs and runners are great at not only adding to the beauty of your floors but also protecting them. Place rugs with tassels, ribbons, or other materials that could snag on shoes or furniture legs in high-traffic areas. They will go a long way towards keeping your wood floor safe from damage. As well as their regular use, you can put them down if entertaining guests for dinner parties, for example so that everyone’s shoes are offs the ground before they come into contact with your floors. You must look at these attractive carpets, which provide good protection to wooden surfaces.
2. Consider Floor Polishing and Sanding
This option is expensive but can also yield great results. If you’ve already polished your wood floors, any repairs to scratches are quick and easy because the color matches well. However, if you want to blend in new floorboards or change the color of the wooden flooring entirely, this may not be practical.A much cheaper method is to sand down the existing surface of the floorboards and repolish it using a similar shade. Once finished, it will look just like new again.
3. Put down Mats inside and outside Your Home
Placing mats inside your home is one of the best ways to keep floors looking great. They soak up dirt, mud, water, and any other elements that could scratch your wood floors before they come in contact with your interior flooring. It’s also a good idea to put them next to doors and windows where people might wipe their shoes on when entering the house.
We recommend using rubber doormats or coir matting at all entrances into your property outside the home. This will help stop debris like stones and soil getting tracked onto wooden surfaces inside, which can leave scratches when you walk over them in socks or shoes.
4. Place Mats under Furniture Legs and Skirting Boards
Another way to keep wooden surfaces in good condition is by using felt pads under furniture legs and anything else that could scratch them when moving across the room. Feet-on metal coat hangers can do just as much damage if they’re dragged along the ground, so be sure to use something soft like a shaggy rug or even just some old towels underneath these items too! It also doesn’t hurt to protect your skirting boards, which will probably see a lot of action from people’s feet or chairs.
5. Keep Furniture Legs Away From the Walls and Wood
When pushed against wooden surfaces, furniture legs can scuff and scratch them quite easily. Make sure there is always enough space between pieces of furniture and any walls, doors, or skirting boards made out of wood. Also, be careful when putting up shelves near these surfaces because the weight of items on them could also cause damage.
6. Put down Laminate Flooring in High Traffic Areas
You can buy laminate flooring quite cheaply nowadays compared to proper hardwood varieties, but it offers similar protection against scratches, so it is a good choice for high traffic areas. It has an attractive finish that looks just like wooden floorboards without all the hassle you have to look after them properly. If you need to repair a scratch, these laminates are easy – just sand down the existing surface and repolish using a matching color.
7. Use Linoleum in Kitchens and Bathrooms
Linoleum is an excellent choice for kitchens and bathrooms and hallways or stairs that see a lot of traffic because it’s resistant to moisture, which could cause wood flooring damage if it seeps through. For example, it can withstand steam from boiling water easily, which means you won’t have to worry about the finish on your wooden floors going dull or peeling off with extended exposure. As well as this, linoleum comes in lots of fun colors and patterns – so you’ll never get bored of the look.
8. Don’t Put Anything Heavy on Wood Surfaces
It would be best if you always tried to keep heavy objects away from any wooden surfaces that are likely to get damaged because weight can cause problems with flooring. Besides this, it’s also one of the easiest ways to ensure your wooden floors don’t go out of shape or become warped over time.
Conclusion
Building solid wood flooring is durable but requires careful maintenance to keep it looking good. It starts with understanding the different types of woods that can be used for floors and knowing what you’re up against. We hope this buyer’s guide has given you a greater understanding of what to expect when it comes to caring for your new flooring.
Autobiography
Jim Pulman has extensive knowledge and experience in Home Building, Construction, and Design. He writes articles in his free time and partners with content creators to share his expertise with the online community
