Advice on Safe and Effective china marble  Cleaning

Cleaning marble and caring for marble floors does not have to be complicated. However, care should be taken with stones like marble and also limestone. Armed with a little knowledge and the right products for cleaning marble, caring for your marble floor should be relatively straightforward.

Although usually harder than limestone, marble is not generally speaking as hard as say granite. As a result consideration should be given to wear prevention. Perhaps even more important when cleaning marble is an understanding of the nature of the stone. Marble is a calcium-based china granite and as a result is very sensitive to acids, when choosing the best products for cleaning marble, on no account use an acid product.

Below is our 6 point guide to marble care and maintenance:

1. Make sure your marble is protected with a good quality sealer like Sealer's Choice 15 Gold

2. Eliminate Grit – Grit is the main cause of wear to marble floors, especially polished marble. Ideally, a dust matt placed both inside and outside the room will help remove grit form shoes and thus prevent it from getting onto the floor.

3. Sweep or vacuum regularly – As well as keeping the floor looking clean this also removes grit.

4. Mop up isolated spills as they occur – Don't leave strong contaminants like wine or coffee to dwell, mop up immediately

5. Wash the marble at regular intervals using a mild, neutral cleaner - this will clean the marble without harming the stone, grout or sealer.

6. From time to time perform a periodic deep clean – for this we recommend a high alkaline cleaner

Detailed instructions for cleaning marble floors:

For routine cleaning use Concentrated Tile Cleaner . Concentrated Tile Cleaner is a mild cleaner that is safe for cleaning marble floors on a routine or regular basis.

For cleaning marble more intensively on an infrequent basis we would recommend the use of Heavy Duty Tile & Grout Cleaner is a powerful degreaser and deep cleaning solution. When applied to the floor, leave to dwell for 5 to 15 minutes depending on the severity of the dirt. Then agitate by scrubbing with a nylon or natural bristle scrubbing brush. Mop up or wet vac the dirty solution and rinse well with clean water. The important things here are dwell time and rinsing; Alkaline-cleaning solutions need time to 'work'. The longer you leave the solution before scrubbing (without allowing it to dry out of course) the more 'work' it will do and the deeper the clean you will achieve. Once you have 'lifted' the dirt off the floor it will be suspended in the solution, so it is critical that you remove this dirty solution (don't allow it to dry naturally) otherwise the dissolved dirt will just go straight back onto the marble along with detergent residue!