How Clean does my floor need to be before applying floor lacquer

Hello and Welcome to another WFR Blog Post.

Today we'll touch on a general cleanliness question of when a floor has been sanded and properly prepared in readiness for the first coat of seal.

The question I've recently received from a DIYer who has sanded his own floor is "How clean does the floor need to be before I apply the lacquer ?"

Pretty straightforward answer this one, 'As clean as possible'.....the cleaner your floor the better overall it will look, its a very simple equation really, as a general rule of thumb on a standard parquet block floor of say 20m2 we would vacuum the floor probably 5 times over the course of the day.

With floor sanding you really can't vacuum enough, but on occasions no matter how carefully the floor has been hoovered there ALWAYS seems to be the odd bit of debris that is in the way just as you are starting to apply the first coat of seal.

Personally I advocate the use of 'Tack Clothing' the floor just after the final vacuuming has taken place, it never ceases to amaze how much dust and crud the tack clothing process picks up, for a 20m2 room I'd advise using 2 cloths, tack cloths are very cheap and the process is ridiculously easy to do and will take less than 5 minutes for a 20m2 wood floor, it will make a tangible difference.

If there are any Pro's who are reading this thinking 'yeah right'..... just try it once and see what a difference tack clothing makes......I was converted many many moons ago and now make sure we tack cloth EVERY floor we do.....Remember the cleaner the floor the better the finish will be....its that simple.


The proof is in the pudding....well the pudding in this case is the two pictures below, the first is our brand new tack cloth just before we used it on a 10m2 Mahogany Parquet Block Floor, the second picture is just after it had been used on the said 10m2 floor.....PS....The floor had been thoroughly vacuumed with a very powerful vacuum just prior to being tack clothed....Don't they say a picture speaks a thousand words.....I shall say no more....

The Tack Cloth Before Being Used

Tack Cloth after being used......

Thanks for Reading.