If you want to clean limestone and care for your limestone floors it can be a relatively simple task. However, you do need to take care with stone like limestone as it is prone to damage by acid and acidic-based products since it is a calcium-based product.Limestone, in general terms, is relatively soft when compared to say granite or indeed marble. This means that it is always sensible to consider wear prevention. Here is a simple 6 – Part guide to cleaning limestone and maintaining limestone floors:
1. Ensure that your limestone is sealed with a high quality product to help protect wear and tear. We suggest a product like Sealer’s Choice Gold.
2. Make sure you try and eliminate grit from the limestone floor as this is the main cause of wear and tear to a limestone floor. Place dust mats inside and outside the room to remove grit from shoes and to help prevent the transfer onto the floor.
3. Vacuum and sweep the limestone floor on a regular basis. This also helps to remove grit and other contaminants.
4. Clean up any spillages as quickly as possible and don’t allow them to dwell and hence stain the stone.
5. Clean the limestone floor regularly using a mild and neutral cleaner. This will help clean the stone without harming the grout or the sealer.
6. Once a quarter conduct a deep clean using a high quality alkaline cleaner.
For more routine cleaning use a product like Concentrated Tile Cleaner. For deeper less periodic cleans, we’d suggest using Heavy Duty Tile & Grout Cleaner. This is a very powerful degreaser and deep cleaning solution.
Copyright Ian Taylor and The Tile and Stone Blog.co.uk, 2013. See copyright notice above.
Hi Ian,
Really helpful site, just want to ask a few things.
I have a Limestone floor laid about 7 years ago, I believe it was never sealed properly as it has a patchy surface appearence although the stone is very uniform in colour and finish, and it has been a pain ever since. It does have to work hard with four people and dogs! I’ve cleaned it many times and stripped and re-sealed various smaller problem areas that were dirty and ?not sealed, but its still not ‘right’. We had a quote for ‘grinding down, resealing etc’ a while ago and they did mention the grout level is too low, but it was SO expensive that my husband didn’t even tell me the price- just too shocked!
If I clean it in sections (its a large floor)thoroughly with an Alkaline cleaner and scrubbing brush etc, then after I’ve re-sealed it what else can I do? Someone mentioned waxing it, is this something you’ve encountered before and is it a good idea? I really want it to look beautiful and stay easy to clean in future. I no longer mind altering the almost white colour of the stone if it makes it easier to maintain. Thanks, Lindy
Hi Lindy,
You seem to have a good handle on what you need to do. What can you do over an above what you suggest? – not a great deal. I would avoid a wax as it will become a real labour of love (or hate!) if your limestone is honed, or very smooth then the wax will not want to bond too well, and if you are sealing it with a good sealer, then the sealer is naturally going to want to repel the wax.
If it is patchy, then a really good deep clean would be good, you can do this yourself, by hand with scrubbing brush as you say. You can hire a rotary machine for about £50 a day form hire shops, but a wet vac is a good idea even if you don’t use a machine.
Let m know if yo need any further help
Hope this helps
Ian
Hi Ian,
Thanks very much for the advice and sorry for my delay in responding. I think I’ll hire both the machines you mentioned as the prospect of tackling the floor in sections with a scrubbing brush is now a bit daunting. I’ll probably wait until summer and then I can put all the rooms contents into the garden and have a good go at it. Thanks for explaining about the Wax and
thanks for all the information throughout, its been really helpful to get me this far.
Best Wishes, Lindy
Your Welcome
Ian
My 20mm thick polished finish jura blue/grey floor tiles have some sort of random darker cloudy blotches, which weren’t on the stone before it was laid, and I would like have them removed.
A strange thing happened during the snowy winter – I took off my wet boots by the front door and when the snow dried on the tiles you could see that it had brought the floor back to the correct colour (in the pattern of the boot soles!).
I would really appreciate any suggestions on what liquids – apart from snow – I might be able to use to bring my floor back to its former glory.
Thank you
Hi John,
To me this really sounds like just surface contamination, the snow wet what ever was on the floor SLOWLY as it melted, so had a long effective dwell time. This may have dissolved the contamination and pushed it tot he edges. When the snow (now water) evaporated and dried, you were left with the patterned ‘clean spot’
Whereas the contaminants will probably withstand a quick mop, where the water and any detergent may only be in contact with the blotch for a few seconds.
I would try to clean the floor with a mild alkaline cleaner, give it plenty of dwell time, whilst not allowing it to dry out. Or if you feel the floor could do with a little more help you could try a mild alaline with a calcium based abrasive such as Microscrub by All for Stone.
Hope this helps
Ian
Can anyone advise. We have a walk in shower lined with limestone tiles. Our water comes from a bore hole and although filtered has turned the tiles in contact with the shower an orange colour. I have tried caustic which has had no impact on the discolouration….can anyone recommend a product that will remove this staining?
HI, We put backsplash that has some limestone and some glass tiles. We chose a dark brown grout, but when we wiped it off the grout stained the limestone with a reddish tone. Is there anything we can do?
Hi, not sure if I did my previous post right.
My question is that we put on a blacksplash with limestone and glass. We used a darker grout, but when we wiped the grout off the limestone got stained with a reddish tone. Is there anything we can do to get it off the limestone?
Thanks
Hi Irene,
OK it might be tricky – normally you would need a mild acid based product to remove grout staining but you cannot do that with limestone (the glass would be fine).
So you will have to try another solution.
You could try, just because you never know, dabbing a little household bleach over a test area – just in case any of the pigment is mobile enough to be affected. eave it on for 15 minutes to 30 minutes then rinse –
If that does not wok them you could try a product like nanoscrub by Aqua Mix or Ultracare Abrasive surface cleaner by Mapei (both available in Canada) they can help to safely abrade out the colour
Sometimes the colour stain is mainly latex from the grout – so you can try a small amount of solvent- a good way to see if this will work is to rub a little clear (acetone) nail varnish remover over a test area, this may help too.
Worth a try
Hope this helps
Ian
Hi there,
I have some tumbled limestone patio slabs with mildew stains after a long harsh autumn and winter. What’s the best way to clean them down – I’ve heard that a mild bleach solution could be suitable? The slabs were sealed when after they went down.
Thanks,
Caroline
Hi Caroline,
Yes a mild dilute bleach would most likely help, there are other commercial products available but try that first – as long as it is safe to do so.
Hope this helps
Ian
My husband has used sugar soap to try to clean a small area of our limestone floor and it has left a dull mark on the floor. How can this be rectified?
Hi,
OK, hard to know what has happened here. Sugar soap (in the UK at least) is just a mild alkaline cleaner/degreaser. What was the ‘dirt’ being removed? It is possible that some dirt has been removed leaving a cleaner patch which just happens to look a little more dull – unlikely but possible. Or the rubbing/cleaning action has taken a tiny bit of the surface sheen of the stone away – esp if the cleaning pad/cloth was abrasive.
Or there was some kind of seal or coating on the surface that has been partially removed.
Other possibilities are that only a partial clean was done, so some dirt was partially broken down and ‘smudged’ around. Or perhaps just cleaning the surface has removed some sealer and allowed the stone to wet out more freely and become darker when wet.
A pic would be very useful in this case. I have cc’d this message to your email, you can reply to that with a picture if you wish)
Hope this helps
Ian
My limestone floor has got the odd stain and mark. I’d like to clean it all with sugar soap. How should I go about this for a uniform look and what should I seal it with afterwards.
HI,
OK, well ‘sugar soap’ is a generic term but most products labelled as such are basically an alkaline de-greaser. I would do a test first to make sure it is ok on your stone and to see the results it produces. I have not used it myself but suggest follow the on bottle instructions for dilution. Pre dampen the limestone with a wet mop. Apply solution and leave it to dwell for a good few minutes (10 to 15 should be ok – but make sure you keep the water from any water-sensitive surface such as kick boards, kitchen unit end panels (often made of highly absorbent mdf or similar material)).
Agitate the solution with a scrub brush or nylon pad. Do not alow the floor to dry out. pick up the solution with a mop if better still a wet vac. Then rinse the floor with fresh, clean water and a clean mop. Pick up the rinsing water. For best results now buff the floor dry with an old towel (can be wrapped around a mop or broom).
When THOROUGHLY dry you can the re seal if it needs it. Limestone will take either a solvent or water based impregnating sealer, if it is not highly polished I would go with a premium water based one (such as out Seal Gold by All for Stone for example).
Hope that helps
Ian