Key Points
- Use warm, distilled water with minimal soap for streak-free floors and dry them quickly afterward.
- DIY cleaners with vinegar and castile soap work well, and baking soda paste helps on textured tiles if rinsed thoroughly.
- Always check that store-bought tile cleaners match your tile type to avoid damage.
After you’ve put forth the effort of cleaning your tile floors, streaks are an unappealing sight that detracts from admiring your handiwork.
After trying countless cleaning solutions and different methods, we decided it was time to finally ask a pro their secrets.
We always knew achieving streak-free floors wasn’t a pipe dream, but the fact that it’s so easy and we’ve wasted so much time on the endeavor is actually a bit irritating.
So without further ado, here’s how to clean your tile floors without leaving any streaks behind.
Meet the Expert
- Nicole Jacques is an eco-friendly cleaning expert and the author of Go Green When You Clean. She creates educational content on housekeeping topics.
- Jennie Holmes is the branch Manager of ServiceMaster Clean. She’s worked with the company for more than 20 years and has hands-on experience with helping commercial and residential property owners maintain their carpets, upholstery, and flooring.
The Secret to Streak-Free Tile Floors
You don’t need a fancy steam mop or expensive cleaners to keep your tile clean and shiny. Cleaning expert Nicole Jacques’s secret to streak-free tile floors is affordable and simple, but three-fold:
- Don’t use hard water. Use warm distilled water to avoid mineral streaks.
- Less is more with soap. Too much = streaks.
- Dry as you go. “I keep an old towel on my flat mop head (like an old Swiffer) to buff dry after mopping,” she says. “It looks ridiculous, but it works wonders.”
Cleaning pro Jennie Holmes emphasizes the importance of drying your tile floors quickly.
“Remember to buff all areas systematically, or else it is easy to miss areas,” she says. “Speed is the key. It needs to be done quickly, or else you will end up with water streaks.”
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A Streak-Free DIY Cleaner
One major key to streak-free tile floors lies in the cleaning solution. Jacques has experimented with making DIY floor cleaner, and she’s nailed the perfect formula that will leave any type of tile clean and streak-free. Here’s what’s in it:
- 1 gallon of distilled warm water
- 1/4 cup white vinegar
- A squirt of unscented Castile soap
- Optional: a few drops of lemon or eucalyptus essential oil
Tips for Textured Tile
Alfred Evelina 500px / Getty Images
If you’ve got textured floors in your bathroom or kitchen, you know that they’re just as prone to streaks as their shiny counterparts. Holmes suggests cleaning a grainy surface with a grainy paste.
Her favorite DIY formula is 3 cups of baking soda and 1 cup of warm water. Buff all of the paste off, and make sure you remove it all in the process to prevent streaks.
“You might prefer to do this in small sections at a time, as it can be labour-intensive,” she warns.
How Often to Clean Tile Floors
Another culprit of streaky floors is dirt. Cleaning your tile floors on a regular basis prevents dirt from building up. Jacques recommends doing a deep clean every one to two weeks, depending on the foot traffic in your home, plus whether or not you have pets and kids.
“But I spot clean daily—because if I don’t, something sticky is guaranteed to find me barefoot at 6 a.m.,” she adds.
And Jacques points out that keeping your tile and grout clean is important because a clean home is a healthy home.
“A clean floor doesn’t just look good,” she says. “It keeps allergens, toxins, and bacteria from circulating in your home.”
