To keep your travertine floors looking beautiful between professional cleaning and restoration, a few simple steps may be taken. In the end, you’ll enjoy the benefits of a well maintained floor resulting in less haze, fewer scratches, and an improved honed or glossed reflective finish of the tiles.

First and foremost, frequent dust mopping with a microfiber flat mop will remove unsightly dust, dirt, pet hair, and food particles off the floor. This allows for a visibly noticeable difference in the floor’s appearance, along with removing debris which may scratch the floor, decreasing the gloss.

Secondly, routine cleaning should be done using a PH neutral floor cleaner that is produced specifically for natural stone floors, such as travertine. Acidic cleaners will etch or damage your travertine floors, resulting in a dull finish with no reflectivity. High alkaline cleaners may also dull the surface of your floors over time and should generally only be used during the restorative cleaning process. Rather than flood mopping the surface of your floor, mix the neutral cleaner in a spray bottle and lightly spritz it on the floor. Use a fresh, clean microfiber mop to lightly scrub the floor. It’s important to dry the floor as quickly as possible, disallowing any remaining cleaning residue to dry on the surface of the tiles or to penetrate the grout.

Finally, place felt sliders on the bottom of your furniture, especially those that are moved frequently such as dining chairs and bar stools. This limits scratches that may occur from dragging heavy furniture across the tiles, which results in unsightly marks on the surface.

Following these guidelines will lead to longer lasting beauty of your travertine tile floors.

Let us know if you’d like help cleaning your floors.

This is one of a series of articles written and published on behalf of Stone and Tile PRO Partners.