Table of Contents
The short answer
Every hard floor is cleaned in the same three moves. Take the grit off dry. Wash with as little water as the floor allows. Leave nothing behind to dry on it. What changes from one floor to the next is how much water, which cleaner and how much scrubbing the surface will tolerate.
Glazed ceramic and porcelain tolerate almost anything, and their weak point is the grout between the tiles. Vinyl is waterproof on top and vulnerable at its seams, and it is damaged by heat, solvents and abrasives. Wood and laminate must never be flooded or steam-mopped; a mop wrung almost dry is the limit. Marble is the odd one out, because it is damaged chemically by the acid cleaners that are safe on every tile.
IHR Dream Cleaning's floor and tile cleaning covers ceramic, porcelain, marble and vinyl floors, with their grout lines, edges and skirting boards, and is booked by the hour. The table below is the whole guide in five rows. The sections after it give the reasons.
| Floor | Water | Cleaner | Never |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glazed ceramic | Damp or wet mop | Neutral; a descaler only for scale | Wire brushes, metal scourers |
| Porcelain | Damp or wet mop | Neutral; a descaler only for scale | Wax and 'shine' liquids |
| Vinyl | Damp mop only | Neutral floor cleaner | Steam, solvents, abrasive pads |
| Wood and laminate | Mop wrung almost dry | The cleaner made for the finish | Flooding, steam, vinegar |
| Marble and other stone | Damp mop, then dried | pH-neutral stone cleaner | Any acid; abrasives |
First, work out what you are standing on
The wrong routine usually starts with a wrong guess about the floor. Wood-look porcelain, wood-look vinyl, laminate and real wood can look the same in a photograph, and they need three different kinds of care. Two minutes on your knees settles it.
| Floor | Look and feel | The give-away |
|---|---|---|
| Glazed ceramic | Hard and cold, with a glassy face and grout lines | A chipped edge shows a red, brown or off-white body |
| Porcelain | Hard, cold and dense; polished, matt or textured | A cut edge at a threshold shows a pale, dense body |
| Vinyl | Slightly warm and soft, quiet underfoot, no grout | A fingernail pressed in leaves a faint dent that recovers |
| Laminate | Hard, with a wood pattern that repeats from board to board | Sounds hollow when tapped; boards click together |
| Wood | Real grain that never repeats; warm to the touch | Fine gaps between boards; a dent shows bare timber |
| Marble | Cold, with veins that differ on every tile | The veining runs through the stone at a cut edge |
If you still cannot tell
If you rent, the quickest answer is a message to the landlord or the building management asking what was laid. If you own, the handover documents for the home may list the finishes room by room. When neither helps, use the gentlest routine in this guide, a neutral cleaner and a well-wrung mop, which is safe on all of them.
The method that suits every floor: dry first, then damp
The same sequence works on every floor in this guide. Only the amount of water changes.
- Clear the floor. Lift mats and shake them outside, and pick up anything a mop would push around.
- Take the grit off dry, with a vacuum cleaner fitted with a hard-floor head or a flat microfibre dust mop. Do the edges and corners first. In Abu Dhabi most of what lies on a floor is fine sand, and sand under a wet mop becomes mud that scratches as it is pushed along.
- Mix the cleaner exactly as its label says. Extra detergent does not clean better. It stays on the floor as a film that shows every footprint.
- Mop with a flat microfibre pad that is damp, not dripping. Work backwards towards the door in overlapping S-shaped passes, so that the leading edge of the pad keeps the dirt in front of it.
- Change the pad, or rinse it in a second bucket of clean water, as soon as it greys. One bucket of solution and one of rinse water is the simplest way to stop washing the floor with dirty water.
- Let the floor dry before anyone walks on it. On glossy tile and polished stone, dry it with a clean cloth, because the tap water here leaves mineral marks where it evaporates.
Why microfibre, and how to keep it working
Microfibre is made of split synthetic fibres far finer than cotton. Used dry, they pick up fine dust and hold it where a cotton cloth pushes it along. Used damp, they clean with much less water and detergent than a string mop, which is exactly what vinyl, laminate and wood need. A flat mop with removable pads also lets you change the pad from room to room, so the grease of the kitchen is not carried into the bedrooms.
It stops working when the fibres clog. Wash pads and cloths after each use, without fabric softener, which coats the fibres, and apart from cotton towels, whose lint they collect. Keep a separate colour for bathrooms. A pad that smears and no longer grips the floor after washing is finished.
What the string mop and bucket get wrong
A cotton string mop holds a great deal of water and gives most of it to the floor. On glazed tile that is merely slow to dry. On wood, laminate and vinyl it is how water reaches the joints. The mop also goes back into the same bucket all morning, so the last room is washed with the dirt of the first. If a string mop is what you have, wring it hard and change the water for every room.
Ceramic and porcelain tile
Fired tile is the most forgiving floor there is. Glazed ceramic carries a layer of glass on its face, and porcelain is dense enough to absorb almost nothing. Both shrug off water, heat and nearly every household cleaner. When a tiled floor looks dirty, the tile is rarely the reason.
Routine care, by finish
- Glossy and polished tile shows streaks more than dirt. Use less detergent than you think you need, rinse with clean water and dry the floor.
- Matt tile hides streaks and holds on to greasy footprints. Warm water with a neutral cleaner, then a second pass with clean water, deals with both.
- Textured and anti-slip tile, the kind laid in bathrooms, kitchens and on balconies, holds dirt in its hollows while a flat mop skates over the top. It needs a stiff nylon brush or a deck brush from time to time, followed by a rinse.
- Polished porcelain can have microscopic pores that take in stains from coffee, ink or coloured grout. Wipe spills promptly, and avoid wax and 'shine' liquids, which build a smeary, slippery film.
Three films that make clean tile look dirty
A floor that looks dull an hour after it was mopped usually has something dried onto it. Which film it is decides what removes it.
| Film | How it looks | What removes it |
|---|---|---|
| Detergent film | Smears and footprints; slightly tacky underfoot | Clean water, changed often, then drying |
| Limescale | White marks where water dried; rough to the touch | A descaler on tile; never on marble |
| Grout haze | A cloudy bloom since the tiles were laid; gone when wet, back when dry | A grout-haze remover matched to the grout |
Grout: the part that really gets dirty
Cement grout is porous and sits a little lower than the tiles, so mop water runs into the lines and dries there, leaving its dirt behind. That is why a floor mopped every week still ends up with grey joints. Cleaning them takes a cleaner left on for a few minutes, a nylon brush worked along the line and, most of all, removal of the dirty liquid afterwards. Wire brushes and sharp tools scratch the tile edges and tear the grout. Acid cleaners dissolve a little of the cement each time they are used, so keep them for real limescale and rinse at once.
Cleaning has a limit here. Grout that is cracked, crumbling or missing, and silicone that has turned black inside, need replacing and not scrubbing. How to tell which you have is in when grout and silicone need replacing.
Grout haze on new tiles
Grout haze is a thin film of cement left on the face of the tiles when a floor is grouted and not wiped down properly. It is the usual reason a new or renovated floor looks dusty soon after it has been mopped. Ordinary cleaners do not move it. It needs a grout-haze remover, used as its label directs, tested on one tile first and rinsed away thoroughly.
The common removers for cement haze are acids. They are safe on ceramic and porcelain and ruinous on marble, and epoxy grout needs a remover of its own kind, so both the floor and the grout have to be known before a bottle is opened. In a home that has just been built or renovated the haze is one part of a larger job, described in after-builders cleaning.
What a tile deep clean involves
A tile deep clean is what the floor needs when weekly mopping no longer makes it look clean: the grout has gone grey, the texture is holding dirt and the edges are darker than the middle. The difference from mopping is not effort. It is that the dirt is loosened, lifted and taken off the floor instead of being thinned and spread.
- Clear the room of small furniture, rugs and anything standing on the floor.
- Vacuum thoroughly, edges and corners included.
- Apply a cleaner suited to the tile and to the kind of dirt, and leave it to work for a few minutes without letting it dry.
- Agitate. Grout lines are brushed along their length, and the open floor is scrubbed by machine or with a deck brush.
- Pick up the dirty solution with a wet vacuum, or with a mop wrung into a separate bucket. This is the step that makes it a deep clean.
- Rinse with clean water and pick up again, so that no cleaner dries on the surface.
- Finish the edges, corners and thresholds by hand, and wipe the skirting boards.
- Dry the floor and check it in good light, looking low across the surface, where streaks and missed joints show.
How often, and what it will not fix
Machine-cleaning tiles and grout every six to twelve months is usual, and greying grout lines are the clearest sign that it is time. Kitchens and the path from the front door get there first. A deep clean restores what is dirty. It does not restore what is damaged: a worn glaze, a chipped tile, crumbled grout or a dull, etched patch on marble all look the same afterwards, only cleaner.
Vinyl floors
Vinyl flooring is a sheet, a tile or a plank of PVC with a printed pattern under a clear wear layer. The surface is waterproof and easy to clean. The weak points are the seams, the adhesive or the click joints underneath, and the wear layer itself, which cannot be renewed once it has been scratched through.
- Take the grit off dry before every wash. Sand scratches the wear layer, and dull paths in vinyl cannot be polished out.
- Use a damp mop and a neutral floor cleaner. Do not flood the floor: water that gets through a seam softens the adhesive of a glued floor and sits unseen under a click floor.
- No steam. Heat softens vinyl and its adhesive, edges curl and planks distort, and flooring makers commonly rule out steam in their care instructions.
- No solvents and no abrasives. Acetone, nail-polish remover and thinners attack the surface, and scouring powder and rough pads scratch it.
- No wax or 'mop and shine' on modern vinyl. It has its own finish, and added polish builds into a yellowing film.
- Check the backing of your mats. Rubber-backed mats can leave a yellow-brown stain on vinyl that does not come out, so choose mats sold as safe for vinyl floors.
- Protect it from point loads and sun. Fit felt pads, lift appliances instead of dragging them, and draw the blinds where strong sun falls through full-height glass, because heat makes vinyl expand and fade.
Vinyl and adhesives
Adhesive matters to vinyl in two ways. The first is the glue you cannot see. A glued vinyl floor is only as sound as its adhesive, and water and heat are what break that bond; a plank that lifts at one corner is nearly always the result of one or the other. Keep it dry and have the installer fix it down again before grit works its way underneath.
The second is glue on the surface: tape residue, sticker marks, the tacky outline of an old mat, or adhesive squeezed up between the planks of a newly laid floor. Start with warm water, a neutral cleaner and time, and lift what softens with a plastic scraper or a fingernail. Many liquids that dissolve glue also soften vinyl, so ask the floor's maker or installer which remover is safe before trying one, and test it where it will not be seen. Glue that keeps rising between new planks is a fault for the installer to put right, not a cleaning job.
Wood and laminate floors
Three different floors share the word. Solid wood is timber all the way through. Engineered wood is a layer of real timber on a plywood base. Laminate is not wood on the surface at all: it is a photograph of wood under a hard clear layer, on a fibreboard core. All three are cleaned the same way, almost dry. They differ in what can be done once they look worn.
Why water and steam are the enemy
Wood takes in water and swells. Boards that are wetted from above cup, with their edges rising higher than the centre. Joints open and darken, and the finish turns white or grey where water has sat. Laminate is less forgiving still. Its fibreboard core swells at the board edges, and that swelling is permanent: the raised edges do not go back down when the floor dries.
A steam mop does the same harm faster, because it drives hot vapour into the joints and under the finish, and flooring makers generally advise against it for both materials. So the rules are short. No flooding, no steam, no dripping string mop, and no wet mats, plant pots or spills left to stand.
The routine
Leave out vinegar, which flooring makers advise against because acid dulls a finish over time, and furniture polish, which makes a floor slippery. The rest is five steps.
- Dry dust-mop, or vacuum with a hard-floor head. Switch off a rotating brush bar, which can mark the finish.
- Wring the mop until it feels almost dry. The floor should be dry again within a minute or two of the mop passing. If it stays wet for longer, there is too much water.
- Use the cleaner made for the floor's finish. A lacquered floor takes a neutral wood-floor cleaner. An oiled floor takes the soap its maker specifies, which feeds the oil where ordinary detergent strips it.
- Mop along the boards, not across them, so that no liquid is pushed into the joints.
- Wipe up spills at once, and dry the spot.
Wood floors in this climate
Wood moves with the moisture in the air. With the AC running, the air indoors is dry for most of the year and narrow gaps between boards are normal. A home shut up for the summer with the AC off turns humid, and the same boards swell and can cup. If you have wood floors and travel for weeks at a time, ask the installer what conditions the floor should be kept in while you are away.
Day to day the threats are the ones every floor here shares: sand at the balcony door, chair legs without pads, and strong sun through the glass, which changes the colour of timber around rugs and furniture.
Wood floor polish: what it is, and when to leave it alone
The phrase covers two different things. The first is a bottled polish or refresher: a thin film, usually acrylic or polyurethane, that fills fine scratches and adds gloss for some months. It is meant for sealed, lacquered floors in sound condition, and only where the floor's maker allows it. It does not belong on oiled floors, and on laminate it sits on top and smears. Its drawbacks are real. It builds up coat on coat, turns cloudy and patchy along the walkways, is hard to remove, and can stop a future coat of lacquer bonding to the floor.
The second meaning is refinishing, which is what a tired hardwood floor usually needs. A lacquered floor that is dull but undamaged can be lightly abraded and given a fresh coat. A floor with deep scratches or grey, bare patches has to be sanded back and finished again. Solid wood can take this several times, engineered wood as often as its top layer allows, and laminate never. Oiled floors are cleaned and re-oiled. All of this is work for a flooring specialist.
None of it is cleaning. Sanding, oiling, lacquering and polishing are treatments, and they are not part of our cleaning visits. Our floor and tile page names ceramic, porcelain, marble and vinyl. Where a home also has wood or laminate, say so when you book a home cleaning visit and point the floors out at the walk-through, so that they get a well-wrung mop and, if you keep one, the cleaner made for that floor.
Why marble is different
Every floor above can be damaged by neglect or by force. Marble is the only common floor that ordinary cleaning damages by chemistry. It is calcium carbonate, as limescale is, so the descaler that rescues a porcelain bathroom floor leaves a permanent dull patch on a marble one, and so do vinegar and lemon. It is also soft enough for sand to scratch, and its shine is the polished stone itself, with no glaze or wear layer over it, so the damage cannot be washed off.
The rules for marble are short: a pH-neutral stone cleaner and nothing else, a damp mop, a dry cloth afterwards, and no acid within splashing distance. Limestone, travertine and terrazzo follow the same rules. What to do once a marble floor has already gone dull is a longer subject, covered in marble floors: cleaning, polishing or crystallising.
One home, several floors
Most homes have more than one floor: porcelain in the living room, textured tile in the bathrooms, perhaps marble in the hall and wood or vinyl in the bedrooms. The risk is the bucket that travels from room to room. This order keeps each floor safe from the routine of the one before.
- Use one neutral cleaner for the whole home. It is safe on every floor in this guide.
- Start with wood and laminate, while the pad is at its cleanest and driest.
- Go on to vinyl, then to the tiled and stone living areas, changing the pad between them.
- Do the kitchen after the living areas, because that is where the grease is.
- Leave the bathrooms until last, with their own pad and cloths. Any descaler stays in the bathroom, is used only on tile, and is rinsed away before a mop goes near a stone threshold.
Booking a floor clean with us
A floor and tile visit covers hard-floor mopping, tile grout scrubbing, edge and corner cleaning and a wipe-down of the skirting boards, and usually runs between an hour and a half and five hours. It is priced from the hourly list like any other visit: three hours by one cleaner is AED 90 with your own products and AED 105 with ours, and a larger area can be given two cleaners. Every price includes VAT, and the full list is on the pricing page.
Three things make the visit go well. Tell us the floor type when you book: marble, porcelain, ceramic, vinyl or stone. Move small furniture, rugs and floor-standing items out of the rooms being done. And make sure there is water, a working power socket for the machine and a way to keep people off the floor while it dries.
Before leaving, the team checks the grout lines and corners with you in good light, and either leaves the floor dry enough to walk on or tells you how long to wait. If something on the agreed list was missed, tell us within 24 hours and it is re-cleaned at no charge.
Some floor work is not cleaning and is arranged separately. Regrouting and new silicone are repairs, quoted from photos or a free inspection before any work starts, as the grout and silicone repair page explains. Polishing marble is a separate job whose scope is confirmed from photos first.
Common questions
Is a steam mop safe on tiles?
On glazed ceramic and porcelain with sound grout, yes. It cleans with heat and very little water, and it leaves no detergent film. It does not remove limescale, and it should stay off vinyl, wood and laminate. Keep it away from cracked or crumbling grout as well, where it only drives water into the gap.
Why is the floor streaky after mopping?
There are three usual reasons, and they often come together: too much detergent, water that was not changed, and hard tap water left to dry on a glossy surface. Halve the detergent, use a second bucket of clean water and dry the floor with a clean pad. If the streaks have been there since the tiles were laid, suspect grout haze instead.
Do tiles and grout need sealing?
Glazed tiles do not; the glaze is the seal. Unglazed and polished porcelain sometimes do, and the maker's instructions say which. Cement grout benefits from a penetrating sealer once it is clean and dry, because sealed grout takes in less dirty water and stays lighter for longer. Natural stone is a separate case, covered in the marble guide.
Is laminate cleaned like wood or like vinyl?
Like wood. The surface of laminate is tough and resists scratches better than timber does, but its core is fibreboard, and water at the board edges ruins it. Use the almost-dry mop, never steam, and wipe spills straight away. Unlike wood, a damaged laminate board cannot be sanded or refinished. It is replaced.
What about balcony and outdoor tiles?
They are usually textured porcelain or ceramic, and their problem is sand packed into the texture and the joints. Sweep or vacuum when the floor is dry, then scrub with a deck brush and a little neutral cleaner, and take the dirty water off with a mop or a squeegee. Check where the water will run before you use much of it. The full method, with the drain and the door track, is in how to clean an apartment balcony.
Match the routine to the floor
Identify the floor, take the grit off dry, use the least water the surface allows, and keep to one neutral cleaner unless you have a reason for another. That covers most of floor care in any home, and it costs nothing but the habit.
When the grout has gone grey or the texture is holding dirt that a mop no longer shifts, the floor and tile cleaning page explains what a visit covers. Choose the hours and whether we bring the materials, and the price is shown before you confirm, with payment by card online. You can book a visit online in a few minutes.
