Everyone knows that adding a hardwood floor to a home can make a huge difference to the feel and the ambience of the surroundings. However, after a few years a hardwood floor may start to show signs of everyday wear and tear. And whilst most of the marks, scuffs and blemishes will do little more that to add to the floor’s character, there are some things you can do to give your floor a new lease of life or slow the aging process.

Hardwood flooring can get scratched with heavy use, so it is important to use castor cups under furniture and make sure heavy furniture items are always lifted instead of being dragged across the floor. Likewise regular vacuuming can help as this will remove the dirt and dust particles which can cause small scratches on the floor surface.

It’s also important to never wet mop a hardwood floor. If the floor needs to be mopped, the mop should be wrung out thoroughly before wiping across the floor.

Sometimes discolouration can occur on a solid wood floor. Most discolouration problems are due to constant exposure of sunlight. For this reason it is important to move furniture around the room occasionally, if you can, and make sure the rug in the centre of the room is lifted from time-to-time to give the centre of the floor some exposure to light.

It’s also worth mentioning that continual walking across the floor in shoes such as high heels can damage the floor surface. The one guaranteed way to stop shoe marks is to wear slippers when walking across the floor.

You can use deep cleaning techniques and buffing to restore the surface finish on a solid wood floor, but it’s best to leave this job to the professionals who have the right equipment and the knowhow to do the job properly.