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Newly finished hardwood floors are beautiful — so beautiful that a recent National Association of Realtors survey found that wood floor refinishing received a high "Joy Score" from homeowners, who reported happiness and satisfaction after an upgrade. Sixty-four percent of those polled said they enjoy being home more now that their floors are finished.
But foot traffic, kids and pets can quickly make those pristine floors look tired and worn. Luckily, cleaning and caring for a wood floor is not that difficult, especially with today's finishes and sealants. Good upkeep means removing gritty, abrasive dust that can scratch, using the right mop or vacuum cleaner designed for hardwood floors, and choosing a liquid cleaner that is wood-safe and offers TLC.
In the Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab, we test all kinds of cleaners for all types of floor surfaces from carpet stain removers to the best mops. Wood floor cleaners are a big part of the mix. We track how well they remove a sticky, dried-on gelatin mixture we paint on; how fast and fully they erase scuff marks we make with a rubber shoe heel; ease of application; and dry time. We’ve found that the best cleaners contain ingredients to dissolve dirt and grime but not damage the coating or dull the shine. Read on at the end of this article for answers to wood floor cleaning questions and a detailed walkthrough of how we test.
Note: None of the cleaners or appliances we list here are recommended for floors treated with wax or other penetrating finishes.
Bona has a top-tier reputation when it comes to cleaning wood floors. It began as (and still is) a professional wood floor refinishing company, so they know how to safely clean wood. And in our testing, Bona's Hardwood Floor Cleaner cut through our sticky test soil and erased shoe scuffs faster than all the other products we tested.
All you have to do is lightly mist a 3-foot section of floor at a time and go over the area with a microfiber pad mop. Bona's formula evaporates quickly, so there's no need for extra dry buffing before you move on to clean the next section of the floor.
Murphy Oil Soap is a time-tested wood cleaner that's been around for generations, and because it’s concentrated, it will last a long time, making it a great value. (The cost per bottle is under $4.) In our tests, this wood cleaner did a nice job erasing scuff marks with just a few swipes.
It was also impressive at removing sticky soil, though it did take a little more scrubbing than Bona to completely banish the residue. Murphy needs to be diluted in water, so be sure you use it with a well-wrung cloth or mop to keep from over-wetting the wood. And it's not just for wood floors. It can also clean wood cabinets, furniture and more. Its signature cleaning scent has many fans among consumer reviewers, but a small percentage said they didn't like it.
Cleaning is a whole lot easier with Bona's all-in-one microfiber spray mop system. It has an oversized head to cover more ground quickly, and it cleans floors with a washable, reusable microfiber pad. Its onboard cleaner cartridge is refillable with Bona formulas for less waste. In our tests, we found the mop dispenses a wide, fine spray evenly onto the floor.
The long rectangular head maneuvers easily into narrow spaces, and the corners on each side are soft and flexible, so they flip up when you go along walls and baseboards to catch every speck. Bona offers deep-cleaning and even dusting pads that can also be used with this mop. While the pole has a second grip section to make scrubbing easier, it may be a little long for short users and might fall over in storage if not hung from a hook.
True to form, we're recommending another impressive product from the best-performing wood floor cleaner brand in our tests, Bona. This time it's the PowerPlus Deep Cleaner Spray designed for wood floors that haven't been wet cleaned in a while or are in need of deeper cleaning. This heavy-duty formula performed so well during testing that it earned a previous Good Housekeeping Best Cleaning and Organizing Award. One of our Cleaning Lab experts who used it raved afterward, "My wood floors were so clean and shiny after using it that they looked like they had been refinished!"
Certified by the EPA's Safer Choice program, its oxygenated, fast-drying formula penetrates grime and heavy build-up. Plus, when it's time to re-purchase, you can buy this formula in a 128-ounce size to refill the spray bottle and reduce your plastic waste.
This Roborock earned its place as the best vacuum mop for wood floors in the Good Housekeeping Institute's Home Care & Cleaning Lab test. We ran it alongside 10 other models on vinyl and hardwood flooring, and it cleaned up everything from dry oatmeal to wet spills like coffee with ease, although it did need multiple passes to pick up every trace of chocolate syrup.
An excellent choice for bigger homes, this model has one of the largest clean water tanks we tested, holding 900 milliliters of water. You'll get 43 minutes of runtime on a four-hour battery charge which should be plenty of time to get through the house. But the floor-drying mode is what really impressed us. It's a great way to remove small liquid spills from wood floors quickly, which is key to their longevity. The model is simple to set up, with an easy app and convenient features like voice notifications in three different languages. It was also surprisingly agile to maneuver.
We are big fans of this wet/dry mover and shaker. It's more expensive than some other vacuum mops, but its three brush rolls, clear LED display and effective self-cleaning cycle are worth it. One inconvenience: It cannot stand on its own without being propped up or placed in the dock.
Whether you prefer cleaning your floors using a traditional mop and bucket or a newer spray mop, Libman's Freedom hardwood floor cleaning formula can do both. It's made to be mixed with water for use either in your own bucket or with Libman’s Freedom Dispensing Microfiber Mop. In our tests, it did a very good job of quickly dissolving sticky soil and scuff marks, and because it can be diluted, a little goes a long way.
The bottle top has a handle for easy carrying and a built-in cup for mess-free measuring. Simply squeeze the bottle to fill the measuring cap with the recommended dose of cleaner and pour it directly into a bucket or the Freedom Mop canister. One little bottle makes 4 gallons of cleaner, and this innovative package prevents spills and eliminates the need for a separate measuring cup.
Swiffer's Good Housekeeping Seal-holding battery-operated WetJet Wood Floor mop dispenses a wood-safe cleaning solution at the press of a button. It uses disposable, absorbent textured pads with a scrubby strip to attack dirt and grime and keep it trapped in the pad rather than redepositing it back on your floors. In our tests, it received a perfect score for how easy it was to dispense the liquid onto our hardwood floor test panels. And, because the pads are disposable, there's no dirty, germy mop to store or pads to wash.
Lights on the mop head make it easy to navigate under furniture too. We reviewed test data supporting that the liquid cleaner is safe on wood, and in our tests, the floor dried quickly after mopping and without streaks or residue. Like the pads, however, the cleaner bottle is not refillable and will eventually need replacing.
If you already own or are in the market for a vacuum mop, you'll need a cleaning formula to use in it. Most machine brands offer their own multi-purpose formulas designed to clean a variety of floor surfaces. But when it comes to cleaning wood floors, we like the idea of using a product specifically made for wood, so we were pleased when Bona launched its Hardwood Floor Cleaner Machine Formulation. When we put it to the test in our machines, we found it cleaned well, dried quickly, removed marks and left our floors streak-free.
The consumers on our test panel agreed, so much so that it earned a spot in a past Good Housekeeping Best Cleaning & Organizing Awards. While Bona claims it's safe to use in most brands of vacuum mop, we recommend checking with your mop's manufacturer to ensure it void your appliance's warranty.
The trigger style of Black Diamond's Wood & Laminate Floor Cleaner made it easy to apply, and its clear directions made it one of our top-scoring products for ease of use. Plus, it can be used on finished hardwood and laminate floors. And because it’s in a spray bottle, spot cleaning is as easy as a spritz and a wipe, especially on scuff marks. It took only a few passes to remove them in our tests.
Though you can certainly use Black Diamond with a mop to clean an entire floor, zapping spots and stains when you see them helps extend the time between deep cleanings and exposes your wood and laminate floors to less moisture overall. While the product now claims that its polymer ingredient helps repel future spots and stains, we did not test that attribute.
To test wood floor cleaners, we evaluate how well they remove a sticky, dried-on gelatin mixture that we paint precisely onto hardwood planks, how quickly and completely they remove the scuff marks we make with a rubber shoe heel, how easy they are to apply and how quickly they dry. We’ve found that the best cleaners are those specifically formulated for hard, surface-finished or polyurethane-treated floors. These cleaners have ingredients to dissolve dirt and grime without damaging the coating or dulling the shine.
In the Good Housekeeping Cleaning Lab, we’re continuously testing floor cleaning essentials like vacuum cleaners, mops and robot vacuums. During our initial test, we tested 24 wood floor cleaners exactly the same way, cleaning 216 stains and scuff marks from wood flooring panels. We tested how well each product cleaned after an equal amount of passes and how many passes had to be made with each product to completely remove scuff marks and stains. All product labels were reviewed for proper safety and precautionary notices.
Since then, we have continued to test new wood floor cleaning products as they become available, updating this story with the latest noteworthy ones. The vacuum mop on this list of bests was tested in our Lab and with consumers at home. It performed well, cleaning carpets and bare floors and picking up dry debris and pet hair. It was also deemed easy to use, maintain and store.
✔️ Type: Hardwood floor cleaners come in various forms like sprays, concentrated liquids and spray mops, not to mention vacuum mops, to pick up dust and debris. In the Cleaning Lab, we found that all the wood floor cleaners we tested did remove at least some stains and scuffs, regardless of how they were dispensed. The most convenient ones to use are sprays and spray mops since the cleaner is applied directly to floors with no diluting necessary. They also topped our performance and ease-of-use tests. For vacuums, look for soft rollers and special attachments designed for gentle cleaning.
✔️ Price: You can go low with a bottle of cleaner for under $4 (less than an iced mocha) or make a serious investment, with the Roborock vacuum mop. It depends on how many wood floors you have to clean, how big they are, how much time you have and how committed you are to their upkeep. Devices with disposable or reusable pads might offer an easy way to try a new wood floor cleaner.
✔️ Versatility: Some wood floor cleaners also double as wood furniture cleaners, like our best value pick, Murphy Oil Soap, making it perfect for homes with lots of wood furniture, woodwork and hardwood floors.
✔️ Scent. You'll likely clean most (or all) of your home's rooms with these hardwood floor cleaners, so choose a product with a fragrance you enjoy enough to smell all through the house.
The best way to maintain the vibrancy of wood floors is to leave your shoes at the door, vacuum regularly to remove abrasive dirt and dust (with a straight suction vacuum or with the rotating brush turned off to prevent scratching), clean up spills promptly and keep your pets' nails trimmed.
Use a light application of one of our recommended products and work in small 3-foot square sections to avoid overwetting the floor. Make sure the area you’ve just cleaned dries promptly before moving on to the next section, as too much moisture left on wood for too long can be damaging. For quick touch-ups, clean in the direction of the wood planks. For deeper cleaning, clean both with and across the planks to nab dirt trapped in the crevices. Only damp-clean floors when they need it, depending on how much traffic they get. There’s no need to overwash them; in fact, doing so can do more harm than good.
You may have read that wood floors should only be cleaned with vinegar — we don’t recommend it. Vinegar may clean the surface, but it's acidic and can dull the finish over time. Steam mops should also never be used on hardwood floors, even sealed ones. Excessive water and humidity can penetrate and warp the hardwood flooring. Solid wood flooring is easily affected by factors like humidity, water and extreme temperature changes. Avoid abrasive cleaners, waxes, oils, furniture sprays and products containing ammonia to prevent damage to the finish and floor.
Carolyn Forté, the Good Housekeeping Institute's Home Care and Cleaning Lab Executive Director, has a B.A. in Family & Consumer Sciences from Queens College, City University of New York, and is a consumer products expert. She has been testing, speaking and writing about appliances, textiles, cleaning products and more at Good Housekeeping for 40+ years. Carolyn has hardwood floors throughout her home and plenty of experience cleaning them.
Contributing writer Alice Garbarini Hurley has written about home, food and style for more than 40 years at Seventeen, Good Housekeeping, Coastal Living and more. As a girl, she helped her mother out for holidays by polishing the wood floors in their 1950s home using a can of Butcher's Wax (a.k.a. Bowling Alley Wax) and an electric buffing machine with rotating brushes, a method likely not recommended today. It was hard work, but Alice now wishes she had coaxed her daughters to help out with cleaning the wood floors in their old house.
Carolyn Forté brings more than 40 years of experience as a consumer products expert to her role as executive director of the Good Housekeeping Institute's Home Care and Cleaning Lab. Using deep analytical testing and writing expertise in appliances, cleaning, textiles and organizational products, she produces cleaning and home care advice for GH, has authored numerous books and bookazines for the brand and partners with the American Cleaning Institute to co-produce the Discover Cleaning Summits. She holds a bachelor's degree in family and consumer sciences from Queens College, City University of New York.
Alice Garbarini Hurley has been a lifestyle and consumer writer since a pizza parlor taste test for the Dumont High School Periscope. She wrote about prom dresses and mascara at Seventeen, then about everything that matters at Good Housekeeping as a senior lifestyle writer for 10 years and as a GH freelancer for 10 more. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Coastal Living and InStyle. She has published essays and has blogged at Truth and Beauty since 2010. Writing keeps Alice calm and focused while raising a teenage girl. She loves bluebells and daffodils, Cape Cod, accessories, cream in her coffee and reading cookbooks cover to cover.
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