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How to Clean Old Wood Floors Without Refinishing (Step-by-Step Directions)

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There are many reasons you may not want to refinish your old wood floors. You may have rental properties with wood floors that are in need of attention, and you simply don't want to make the investment. Or, you may not want to disrupt your family during the refinishing process. The reason could be financial, or it could simply be the hassle of the process. After all, the floors will need to be sanded, stained, and then resealed which can be an expensive, messy and difficult process.

If you decide to refinish your floors, it is something you can do yourself. However, many homeowners choose to hire a professional to do the work for them. Fortunately, it's possible to clean your old wood floors without refinishing them. This article will show you how and provide you with a variety of product options that'll help you improve the look of your wood floors for a fraction of the cost of a full refinish.


How to Clean Old Wood Floors without Refinishing (Step-by-Step)

Bringing your wood floors back to their stunning, shiny appearance isn't too difficult. If you want to clean your old wood floors without refinishing them, then follow these four simple steps:

Step One: Remove the Surface Dirt and Debris from your Floors

The most efficient way to remove the dirt and debris from your floor's surface is to use a wet mop. Below we've provided a video and product recommendations.

Step Two: Clean Your Floors

After removing the surface dirt and debris, you'll need to do a deep cleaning on your floor. There are many commercial floor cleaners (see a few of our favorites here) on the market today that are especially designed for cleaning wood floors.

In addition, you can even make your own cleaner from products you may already have in your cupboard. Here are several different methods.

Step Three: Apply a Restorer

If you're pleased with how your floors look after completing Step Two, you can simply skip this step. 

Overtime wood floors tend to lose their shine and often develop scratches and wear spots. Applying a restorer will fill in the scratches as well as adding a top finish to your floor. The restorer will not only bring back the shine, but also protect your floor. 

This step will allow you to restore your floors without actually refinishing them. Which means you'll be able to skip the sanding and staining steps altogether! 

Step Four: Regular Cleaning 

Now that your wood floors look shiny and new again, you'll want to keep them that way. The best way to do this is to clean them on a regular basis. 

A good rule of thumb is to sweep your wood floor with a spray mop every couple of days depending on usage. Then once a month use a cleaner to remove the deeper dirt that's worked its way into the floor.

Wiping a wood floor with a microfiber cloth

How to Clean Old Hardwood Floors

Before you can work on restoring the shine, you'll first need to clean your wood floors. Although, you can use a traditional soft broom and dust pan, the best method is to purchase a hardwood spray mop. 

These hardwood spray mops are the most effective way to keep your wood floors clean on an everyday basis and should be used several times a week. They're easy to use and allow you to spray the right amount of cleaner to the floor exactly when and where it's needed.

There are quite a few spray mops brands available on the market today, and they're a very budget-friendly investment. The Swifter WetJet is a popular choice, however, the pads aren't reusable so you'll need to purchase both the cleaning fluid and the pads to restock.

Our favorite is the Bona Hardwood Floor Premium Spray Mop. It comes with a reusable microfiber cleaning pad, 34 oz of Bona's hardwood cleaner, and a refillable cartridge so you can purchase the cleaning products in larger sizes. The Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is the product we recommend to clean your old wood floors.

Bona Hardwood Floor Premium Spray Mop

Bona Hardwood Floor Premium Spray Mop

This Bona Hardwood Floor Premium Spray Mop comes with everything you need to get your hardwood floors clean and keep them clean.


This video covers how to clean and care for your old hardwood floors.

Watch the Video

How to Remove Scuffs from Old Wood Floors 

Once you've cleaned your floors with a spray mop, you may have noticed some scuff marks that you weren't able to remove. Moving furniture, pets, or even wearing shoes could cause your wood floors to scuff.

In most cases, you can remove scuff marks with a little elbow grease and baking soda. Here's what to do:

  • Dampen a sponge and a small amount of baking soda
  • Rub the sponge and baking soda over the scuff mark
  • In most cases, it'll lift right off. If not, you might need to work at it a little
Cleaning a floor with a wet mop

Cleaning Old Wood Floors with Commercial Cleaning Products

In many cases, especially if there's only normal wear, it's possible to use a wood floor cleaner or revitalizer to bring them back to their former stunning shine. Using these products allows you to clean wood floors without refinishing and without the hassle and expensive of sanding, staining, and resealing.

Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner

As we mentioned above, our favorite hardwood floor cleaner is manufactured by Bona. It's made specifically for cleaning wood floors and it's ready to use directly from the bottle. No mixing or measuring required. And because it's a water-based cleaning formula it'll dry fast and not leave a dulling residue on the surface.

The Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is specially designed for unwaxed, uncoiled, polyurethane finished wood floors. 

Another popular hardwood floor cleaner is the Bruce Hardwood and Laminate Floor Cleaner. It's also designed for no-wax hardwood floors. Simply spray it on and wipe off by hand for spot cleaning, or use a spray mop if you're cleaning the entire floor. 

Both these products do an excellent job of cleaning wood floors. If your floor has lost it's shine, you can add a restorer. Each manufacturer offers a restorer you can use. The Bona Pro Series Hardwood Floor Refresher is easy to apply and will help bring your floors shine back, and the Bruce Wood Finish Restorer works much the same way.

Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner Refill, 128 Fl Oz

Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner

This Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is a pH Neutral formula (7 pH) so you won't need to worry about damaging your floors finish.


Rejuvenate High-Performance Hardwood Floor Cleaner

The Rejuvenate High-Performance Professional Hardwood Floor Cleaner will eliminate dirt and debris from your wood floors. The ionic discharging agents allows the cleaner to dry instantly without streaking.

If your floor needs a little help to bring its shine back, you can use the Rejuvenate Professional Wood Floor Restorer. Rejuvenate offers both a high gloss and satin finish product which allows you to restore your wood floors to your desired level of shine.

The Rejuvenate Professional Wood Floor Restorer fills in scratches and leaves your wood floors with a like-new shine. It's water-based polyurethane formula won't leave a waxy build-up, yet it'll bond to your existing floor's finish and protect it for normal wear-n-tear, and since it seals your floor, it'll resist stains and spills.

Rejuvenate High-Performance Professional Hardwood Floor Cleaner Streak-Free Formula Eliminates The Toughest Dirt and Grime with Little Effort 32oz

Rejuvenate High-Performance Hardwood Floor Cleaner

The Rejuvenate High-Performance Hardwood Floor Cleaner is designed to maximize cleaning power while minimizing streaking.


Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner

Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner is an excellent choice for hardwood floor finishes. It's especially formulated to remove grease, dirt and grime on hardwood floors, and it even works on hardwood vinyl laminate and stone tile. 

The micro-filling technology will not only fill in existing scratches, but it'll also prevent new ones from forming.

This cleaner will lift dirt and grime from your floors and leave them shiny without streaks, and you won't need to worry about a wax built-up either. If you need to use a restorer to shine and polish your floor, you can use the Weiman Wood Floor Polish and Restorer to make your floors look like new again.

Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner - 32 Ounce - Non-toxic for Finished Hardwood Oak Maple Cherry Birch Engineered - Professional Safe Streak-free - Packaging May Vary

Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner

Weiman Hardwood Floor Cleaner is a great choice for cleaning your old wood floors. It'll rejuvenate your floors to their natural suppleness and sheen.


Lemons and Lemon Juice

Cleaning Old Wood Floors with Regular Household Products

You might be surprised to know that it's possible to clean your old hardwood floors with regular household products that you may even have in your cupboard. These products are inexpensive and may even be eco-friendly.

Although there are many homeowners that swear by these methods, we do recommend using a professional product (like those listed above) that's designed specifically for cleaning hard wood floors.

Vinegar and Water

Using a vinegar and water mixture will cut through the grime and dirt/debris build-up on hardwood floors. In addition, it'll leave your floors clean and streak-free.

However, using vinegar and water to clean floors is actually a controversial subject, so if you don't want to take any chances, you might want to try another option.

Even though this method has been the go-to cleaning process for old hardwood floors years ago, it isn't used as much because of the changes in wood flooring, specifically engineered wood floors.

The truth is, you should only use vinegar and water to clean hardwood floors, if you have engineered wood floors, you should never use vinegar because the acid will eat through the baked-in coating that acts like the old-fashioned wax which was manually applied to old hardwood flooring.

If you choose to use this cleaning option, you do need to pay attention to the type of vinegar you use. Just because you have balsamic vinegar in your cupboard doesn't mean you should use it (and for the record, you shouldn't).

You'll want to use either a white vinegar or a concentrated industrial vinegar that's designed for cleaning among other things.

Here's how to clean your old hardwood floors with vinegar and water after sweeping the surface dirt and debris:

  • Add 1 cup of vinegar to 1 gallon of warm water and stir
  • Using a hardwood floor soft mop, begin mopping. Wring the mop out well to prevent excess water from pooling on the floor
  • When the water becomes dirty, replace the mixture
  • Use a clean, absorbent towel to pick up any excess water from the floor

Soap and Water

It's hard to go wrong cleaning your old floors with soap and water. It's easy, inexpensive, and unless you put down too much water, it's safe for your floors.

You'll need a  soft mop and dish soap (Dawn and Murphy's Oil Soap are both great choices). Then do a surface sweep first.

Here's how to clean your old wood floors with soap and water:

  • Add 1/2-cup of dish soap to 1-gallon of warm water
  • Wring your mop to prevent adding too much water onto your floors
  • Move your dampened mop across your floors back and forth in long strokes with the grain of the wood
  • Use a clean, absorbent towel to pick up any excess water from the floor

Lemon Juice and Water

Another cleaning method is lemon juice. There are even specially formulated wood floor products such as the Pledge Clean It or you can use regular lemon juice from a squeeze lemon.

The acidic nature of lemons will help remove stains and leave your floors disinfected, but keep in mind the acid can damage your wood floors finish. After removing the surface dirt and debris here's what to do:

  • If you choose to use the Pledge Clean It product, follow the manufacturers recommendations
  • If you choose to use lemon juice, add 1/2-cup of lemon juice to 1-gallon of warm water
  • Using a hardwood floor soft mop, begin mopping. Wring the mop out well to prevent excess water from pooling on the floor
  • When the water becomes dirty, replace the mixture
  • Use a clean, absorbent towel to pick up any excess water from the floor

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