Cleaning Marble Floor Tile Dirt and Stains

by Holly
(New Orleans)

QUESTION:

I bought a blighted house after Hurricane Katrina. The house has a black and white marble tile floor in the kitchen. The problem is that the floor does not shine and has some stains. In one area it even has some kind of dirty substance on the floor. It looks like dried up red clay, but does not come off with a mop. What can I do to restore the shine and make the floor look nice without paying a lot of money?

ANSWER:

Chances are that the floor was never shiny... it looks like a honed surface to me.

Marble can be finished with many types of surface textures and looks. It's not all shiny. In fact, it's much more common for marble floors to be "honed" since they provide better traction, are easier to maintain and wear better.

It looks honed to me. A honed floor will be smooth with a slight sheen, but not shiny.

A shiny "polished" marble floor is a bit of a pain to keep looking good. It shows all dust and dirt, so you constantly have to sweep and mop it and foot traffic will wear away the shiny layer, so you periodically have to hire an expensive marble maintenance pro to re-polish the floor, etc.

It is possible that is was originally polished and is now dull through wear and damage... but again a pro is necessary to make it shine again.

You should just leave it honed.

For cleaning marble floors that are really dirty use the intensive TILE & GROUT Cleaner. And just FYI... you should never use common cleaners on marble. Regular household cleaners damage marble. You should use only products made specifically for cleaning marble.

Once all surface grime is removed, you can go to work on the stains. Stains are substances that have absorbed into the marble floor below the surface.

Since they are below the surface, no marble cleaning product will touch them. You'll have to follow the step-by-step instructions in the Removing Granite & Marble Stains ebook.

The process is cheap and easy, but may have to be repeated and depends on what stained the marble. It's all spelled out in the ebook.