Can You Use The i-mop on Timber Floors?

Your timber flooring looks great and is expensive to install so its important to look after it especially whilst cleaning. The i-mop is safe to use on all timber flooring, but it's important to know the right settings as well as the correct brushes or pads to use.

What Timber Floors can I use my i-mop on?

Laminate floors

Laminate flooring is commonly referred to as a floating floor. It’s called a floating floor because it doesn’t need to be glued or fastened to the subfloor, it locks together with a tongue and groove system.

Laminate floors are made up of compressed wood chips, and the top layer is a photograph of a particular type of wood finish encased in a clear durable wear layer.

Laminate floors are popular for their low maintenance and durability as well as their relatively low cost.

Engineered hardwood floors

Engineered hardwood floors are increasingly popular compared to solid hardwood floors as they have good resistance to warping.

Most engineered hardwood floors consist of a plywood base, topped with a 100% solid hardwood of varying thickness.

Engineered hardwood floors are available in many different timber finishes. They can be more expensive than solid hardwood floors due to the superior quality and durability of these floors.

Solid hardwood floors

Solid hardwood floors which are 100% solid wood all the way through. A solid floor will normally be 15 – 30mm thick and me finished with a polyurethane sealer, wax, or an oil finish for a more natural look.

Solid hardwood floors have a beautiful natural look, however they are high maintenance and are more susceptible to wear and damage, for example from high heeled shoes.

“Timber look” vinyl

These are not actually a timber floor, however some timber look vinyls are so incredibly good an imitation it can be difficult to know! A timber look vinyl floor contains no wood at all, but rather a vinyl material rendered with a photograph of a wood finish encased in a clear durable wear layer.

How to clean your timber floors using the i-mop

The i-mop can be used to clean any of the above wooden floors. It has a specific water mode that reduces the water flow by 40% to make it safer for these more water sensitive floors. Not only that, the i-mop extracts the water it applies within 1 to 2 seconds of it touching the floor so there’s very minimal risk of water damage to the timber.

There is two different brush types we recommend for use on the i-mop when cleaning timber floors:

- Most common is the soft light blue brushes which are our default recommendation

- Or for flooring with a particularly high gloss finish then we’d recommend the soft natural fibre brush as it will help to protect and enhance the gloss levels

Read: 4 Common problems with the i-mop and how to avoid them.

What chemical should you use to clean timber floors with the i-mop?

Often you can get away with just warm water for light cleaning of timber floors with the i-mop .

However if you do wish to use chemical for extra cleaning power, any floor cleaning detergent with a neutral PH (ph range of 7-9) is safe to run through the i-mop and should be ok for your timber floor. Alternatively if you have an i-mop xl, you can use the i-dose tank with the E52 daily floor cleaner pod.

Read more on rotary vs orbital floor scrubbers: what's the difference?

Looking for more information on how to clean with the i-mop ? View our guide on how to clean different floor types with the i-mop. You can book a demo to see it for yourself here .