The Case Against Floor Polish
Okay, so I’m going to put a trigger warning in here, because I know that floor polish companies have cultlike sway over the hearts and minds of many Americans.
If you love your Bona / Mop and Glo / Rejuvenate / Pledge / Whatever and nobody can take it away from you, read no further. If you’re on the fence or looking for information, this one is for you.
I am not a fan of floor polishes. In fact, I am violently opposed to them.
The way that your flooring is designed makes it completely incompatible with finishes like these products. Let me explain.
Wood, laminate, and luxury vinyl plank flooring are all finished with a durable coat of polyurethane. This protects the floor from damage due to moisture, soil, and scratches.
Consumer-available floor polishes have three major drawbacks.
1) They aren’t effective
Dual-purpose cleaners are not actually that great. Consider a swiss army knife. It’s a screwdriver, and a corkscrew, and a knife, and a nail file, and, and, and. Unfortunately, it is not a good screwdriver, not a good corkscrew, not a good knife or nail file. A product that allegedly cleans and seals at the same time cannot be good at either of those functions in the same way that a swiss army knife is not good at any of the singular tasks it claims to do.
Anything that cleans and seals at the same time is going to have dirt trapped in the sealant layer. You are literally sealing soil onto your floors. Ew.
2) Acrylic vs. Polyurethane
These products are an acrylic sealant. Putting an acrylic sealant on top of a polyurethane sealant is unnecessary.
And there is a reason that factories use a polyurethane sealant instead of acrylic. Acrylic is softer and less durable. You will notice that seven days after using these products, the floors will start to look dull and sad. This is because the finish gets scratched and stops being as shiny- like a ripple on the surface of a lake. Adding another layer smooths out the surface, and makes it appear shiny again.
3) Stripping
Lastly, they need to be stripped periodically. Because you are adding layer upon layer of finish to the floors, this build up will need to be removed every now and then to restart the process. Let’s go back to the lake analogy. We know that scratches on the finish are like ripples on a lake. We also know that we are sealing dirt in every time. It doesn’t matter if a lake is still if the water is dirty: dirty water is not beautiful. After a few weeks of reapplying this acrylic finish, reapplication will stop being an effective form of beautification on your floors.
The companies that sell these acrylic “clean and seal” products also sell stripping chemicals that remove their own products. The strippers are typically more expensive than the polish itself. Do they primarily sell polish or are they primarily selling a solution to a problem they created? That’s up to you to decide.
How can I get my floors shiny then?
We will cover flat mopping methods and materials in another blog post! Stay tuned!
Amber Starling, Author
Founder and President of
Good Witch Cleaning Services, LLC
IICRC Journeyman Textile Cleaner