Why Won't My Floor Tiles Stay Clean? Causes and Solutions

When it comes to floors that won’t stay clean for longer than a couple of hours or days, the constant cleaning can be a headache. Whether ceramic, travertine or terracotta, tiles that are cleaned effectively should be low-maintenance, and should not require expensive periodical deep cleaning. So, if you’re struggling with your tiles always being dirty, there is likely a reason for that. Are they actually getting dirty or is there another underlying problem? Here’s how you can find out.

Key Insights

Dusting and Sweeping Before Mopping: It’s important to dust and sweep tiles before mopping to prevent dirt buildup and ensure a cleaner finish. Some advanced mops like the i-fibre can minimize the need for dust mopping, but it remains a good practice as part of regular maintenance.
Avoiding Chemical Overuse: Overusing cleaning chemicals can lead to residue buildup, making floors look dirtier and potentially slippery. Using the right cleaning tools, like the i-mop, can often eliminate the need for chemicals, or at least reduce their use to every other cleaning.
Choosing the Right Mop: Traditional mops can be inefficient, removing only 30-40% of dirt. Advanced options like the i-mop clean faster, more effectively, and leave floors dry almost immediately. It’s crucial to select a mop that’s suitable for tile floors and to consider the type of tile when choosing cleaning methods.

Are you dusting and sweeping before you bring out the mop?

When it comes to mopping tiles, they can collect a lot of dust and dirt. If we don’t brush this away before mopping, it can build up and cause the tiles to look unclean. Even when not mopping, we recommend doing this anyway as part of a regular maintenance cleaning process.

While some microfibre mops such as i-fibre are designed to reduce the need for dust mopping by having large debris channels built in, dust mopping is good practise before your damp cleaning process.

Are you using too many chemicals?

Overuse of chemicals will almost always lead to an ‘unclean’ look and feel. This is known as chemical residue buildup, a common floor maintenance issue. These chemicals need to be scrubbed off or completely removed, as this chemical residue is doing what these chemicals are designed to do – attract dirt – which is making your floor look dirty! This can also be a problem with safety as these floors can also become slippery.

using too many chemicals to clean your tile floors

It might seem bizarre that using chemicals can, in fact, make the floor dirtier - or at least appear dirtier - but it’s an unfortunate truth. Not only does chemical residue attract dirt and make your floor look dirty, it can also provide a place for bacteria to grow.

The good news is this: With the right cleaning tool, chemicals might not even be necessary. Our i-mop can clean most floors with only water, with only small uses of chemicals occasionally.

In addition, we have a selection of chemical pods that are good for the environment and, used in the right way, won’t leave your floors sticky.

For bathroom floors, we recommend the i-dose E44 washroom cleaner. For cleaning a kitchen or dirty workshop floor, you should use the i-dose E73 degreaser (perfect for cleaning commercial kitchens too!) If you’re cleaning general areas, we usually recommend the i-dose E33 Neutral floor cleaner.

You can get in touch with our team to see how our products can work for you.

When it comes to cleaning hard floors, in many situations we recommend only using chemicals every second time unless the floor is exceptionally dirty. This stops you from getting chemical residue build-up.

A side note: If you’re cleaning tiled floors such as travertine, or any type of stone floors, it’s important that you don’t use strong acidic cleaning chemicals.

i-dose pod based chemical dosing system to clean tile floors

What sort of mop are you using?

When it comes to mops, a lot of us only use a traditional mop and bucket. These can be cumbersome and ineffective, only removing 30-40% of the dirt. Most of the dirt just gets moved around.

It’s important when you choose a mop that not only is it effective, it is also designed for tile floor cleaning.

The i-team’s i-mop can clean all types of hard floors. It not only cleans up to 70% faster than traditional mops, it removes over 97% of dirt. Plus, the floors are left dry within seconds, rather than 10 minutes.

The i-mop is an ideal addition to any commercial cleaning application, because it’s quick, efficient and easily transportable. In addition, if part of your building has tiled floors but the rest is a different hard floor material, it can clean both without any issue.

Of course, there are different types of tiled floors and so they should be cleaned differently. As mentioned, you shouldn’t use strong acidic cleaners on travertine floors.

When it comes to cleaning ceramic tiles and grout, for best results use brushes, rather than pads, on your i-mop or other floor scrubber. The brushes make sure that you really get into the grouted sections of the tile. You should always research your specific type of tile to ensure you don’t apply the wrong cleaning methods, and if you need some help, feel free to contact our team.

Tile floor cleaning processes can be different depending on the tile and application, but if you follow these key steps, you’ll ensure that your tiles are clean in the long-term. Manual mopping of tiles and grout is a time-consuming process, making an investment in an industrial floor mop completely worth it.

Need to reach some hard-to-get-to areas? That’s no problem. We also offer the i-scrub 21B, which can clean any tile in any seemingly unreachable area, for example in showers or on stairs. The i-scrub 21B is best suited to situations where there’s too much dirt buildup to manually clean but it’s not worth using a larger floor mop.

It can also be used in conjunction with the i-mop, making them both the perfect addition to every commercial cleaning company’s suite of cleaning equipment.

Read more in our article on why are my floors streaky after i-mop?