How to clean polished floor tiles?

Associate
Joined
23 Jul 2007
Posts
1,423
Hi all,

I've got black polished floor tiles in my hall and kitchen (big mistake :()!

They're impossible to keep clean as they show up every spec of dirt! So the real problems start when you do actually try to clean it - if I don't get down n my hands and knees after mopping it streaks like crazy.

Does anybody else suffer from these problems? Or found a solution?

Cheers
 
Associate
Joined
8 Mar 2006
Posts
1,402
Location
York
Steam mop works well on high gloss black tile floors, the important thing it to get it to dry quickly. Finding a decent steam mop is not something I can recommend as the only ones I have used have been fairly cheap ones that have broken after a fairly short period of time.

If you are just mopping use very hot water and don't get the floor to wet. Dry the floor with a different dry mop, towel or something else to prevent the streaks. This sounds a bit like what you are doing at the moment.

Dave
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Dec 2004
Posts
5,398
Location
Stoke-on-Trent
Good luck with this...I stupidly chose black gloss tiles for the kitchen (mrs thought I was going to buy dark grey textured) 5 years ago and they are such a pain.
We've tried everything including steam mops, which still need drying by hand anyway to avoid the streaks so seem pointless.

None of the products we've ever tried work and require you to get on your knees and dry it properly. The best we had was white vinegar in hot water and then microfiber cloth to dry, however this does stink!

Now we just use bleach and a tiny bit of fairy liquid, following by hand drying with a microfibre. :(
 
Associate
Joined
6 Feb 2008
Posts
1,750
Are they porcelain tiles?

When we installed ours, we were told that they needed sealing. I therefore applied this:

https://www.tilemountain.co.uk/seal...90-polished-porcelain-stone-sealer-250ml.html

Quite an expensive product but it gives the tiles a kind of coating which seems to stop getting bad smears. Ours are Grey though so perhaps not quite as bad as black.

Note, I didn't buy it from Tile Mountain...that was the first site I found just now when googling.
 
Soldato
Joined
24 Sep 2015
Posts
3,668
Yep, steam mop. We've got polished grey tiles in our kitchen and dining room and they look fantastic when they're clean but they're a sod to clean well.

Normally we'll mop using very hot water and a small amount of floor cleaner then let it dry and then fire up the steam mop. Don't be tempted to have the steam mop chucking out steam all the time as the tiles will end up really quite wet and dry streaky.

When we clean the pads for the steam mop we chuck them in the washing machine, rinse them as many times as the machine will allow and don't use fabric softener.
 
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