Maintaining your parquet floor: the difference between a varnished and an oiled finishing
Design Parquet offers a wide range of parquet floors, allowing you to create your own unique and aesthetic atmosphere. To keep your parquet floor looking good for many years, maintenance is essential and must be adapted not to the nature of the wood, but to its finishing. Indeed, maintaining an oiled parquet floor should be done differently from a varnished parquet floor.
Classic recommendations
To preserve the aesthetics of your parquet, whether it is varnished or oiled, it is important to respect a few recommendations that will give it an unparalleled longevity.
First of all, precautions should be taken when using your floor. To minimise the risk of scratches and indelible marks, use a brush mat or a doormat at the entrance to your home. The purpose of this is to retain as much sand and gravel as possible. Putting protective pads or felts under chair legs and furniture will also prevent scratches and marks. If you use furniture with wheels, such as office chairs, protect your floor with a mat or translucent sheet.
As wood is a material that quickly soaks up any liquid that falls on its surface, wipe it down quickly with a slightly damp sponge or mop.
Maintenance and cleaning should be assessed according to the use of the parts. Dusting with a broom or hoover (equipped with a special parquet brush if possible) can be carried out regularly without damaging your parquet, but cleaning with a mop should be done sparingly, at the risk of damaging the boards irreparably.
Maintenance of an oiled Design Parquet floor
An oiled finishing consists of impregnating the floorboards with penetrating products, composed of natural elements that protect the floor by saturating the pores of the wood. Design Parquet produces parquet floors with three types of oil finish. The products used depend mainly on the colour required. The maintenance of the floor should therefore be carried out with products that best respect the specific characteristics of each floor.
Natura oil finishing
Parquet floors with a Natura oil finish include, for example, Oiled Exotics, Loft Mountain and Sesame.
These floors are protected by their oil finishing, which is applied in the factory. In order to ensure a bond between the floorboards and the protection of the edges of the floor, we strongly recommend that the entire floor is treated with a coat of N+ Maintenance Oil.
It is preferable to carry out routine maintenance with S+ Soap, which will preserve the shine of your boards.
Depending on the traffic, an oiled floor needs to be oiled regularly, once or twice a year. This operation should be carried out with N+ Maintenance Oil, used at the time of installation of your floor.
Maintaining a Natura oiled oak floor
The colourless oiled finishing
Design Parquet offers different choices of parquet with a colourless finish. The classic oak choices such as Rustic or Country, but also floors such as Chalet, Arzon or Havana are colourless oiled. We recommend routine maintenance with S+ Soap, which respects the nature of the wood and its finish. And as soon as you notice that your floor is losing its natural shine, use H+ Maintenance Oil. It should be applied to a clean and dry oiled floor.
Maintaining a colourless oiled oak floor
The Authentic oiled finishing
Galet parquet uses the Authentic oil finishing, which perfectly preserves its brown colour and grey grain. To ensure optimal protection, we recommend applying a coat of Design Protect One+ immediately after installation. And to maintain these characteristics over time, we recommend cleaning your floor with SOAP+ soap for routine maintenance, using a microfibre cloth.
Maintenance of a varnished parquet floor
Varnishing a parquet floor consists of applying a protective film to the wood. The application of several layers of film-forming product will create a protective film, which makes your floor resistant to most accidents (shocks, stains, etc.).
At Design Parquet, we have several varnishes applied to our parquet floors, such as Matte varnish, Satin varnish, Colourless varnish or Gloss varnish. These different varnishes will allow you to have a parquet floor exactly to your image.
And to maintain this floor, we recommend the use of L+ Cleaner for routine maintenance. When you have difficult stains, Blanchon Overactivated Cleaner is the product to use to respect the characteristics of your floor. It is also recommended for removing old layers of metalliser.
Regularly, depending on the traffic and use of your floor, R+ Renovator must be applied to prolong the protection of your floorboards.
Finally, and this for all types of parquet, never wash your parquet with water. And do not use aggressive, abrasive, siliconized or ammoniated detergents. You will lose the beauty of your floor forever.
