Travertine Cleaning UK

Is Cleaning Your Travertine Floor Driving You Nuts?

If your travertine floor has dirty grout and ingrained soil, normal mopping just doesn't cut it.

You need to call a professional Travertine restoration company.

We have been cleaning and restoring Travertine tile floors for over 20 years and built up an enviable reputation for quality and service.

Get a free no-obligation consultation be a trained and experienced Travertine restoration expert as the first step in cleaning your Travertine floor

Can't praise Abbey Floor Care highly enough. We can't believe how they transformed our awful (inherited) stone floors into something so lovely. First rate professionalism and a genuinely lovely man. Highly recommend them. Thank you David ( & Christopher) Karen Holmes

We Can Restore All Types Of Travertine

As with many types of natural stone, there are different finishes, needing a different approach to restoration. Here are some examples of the different finishes of Travertine. Click on the name of the picture resembling your floor to find out more information on how we can restore your travertine.

Honed Travertine

Tumbled Travertine

Vein Cut Travertine

Travertine Countertop

Cleaning And Sealing Honed Travertine Floor Tiles

Dirty Travertine before cleaning and sealing

Travertine cleaning and sealing after

Honed travertine tiles have a smooth finish that can have a dull to a high sheen depending on the grade of finish you prefer. Travertine has natural holes and these holes are filled before finishing to give a smooth finish.
Over time you will notice:

holes appearing because:
- there is an existing is a hole just below the surface of the stone.
- the filling process does not wash out all the fines in the holes, so you often have filler sitting on top of loose sand, giving it a poor foundation.
Traffic lanes will start to go dull with foot traffic wearing the surface.
Dull etch marks start appearing caused by acidic food and drink spills.
Scratches appear from tracked in grit and moving furniture across the floor
strong cleaners will gradually degrade the finish.

We can treat all of these issues by:

filling holes with long-lasting fillers
remove scratches, etch marks and degradation by honing the floor

These photos show how dirty travertine can be deep cleaned and sealed with a water-based travertine sealer to give a beautiful finish.

Our finishing and protection systems will extend the life of your travertine floors so you can enjoy them for years to come

Polished Travertine Cleaning And Sealing

Dull polished Travertine

Travertine honed and polished

Polished Travertine tiles are usually manufactured from high-grade Travertine with little or no filling. However filled travertine is also available with a polished finish, but the grout filler remains dull.

These before and after pictures show how travertine can be re-polished to a lustrous high-shine finish. Polished travertine is usually sealed with an impregnating sealer. The impregnating sealer does not change the high polish on the stone.

This travertine was in poor condition. It had lost its deep gloss through surface scratches, blemishes and some light etch mark damage. The polishing started by cleaning the grout with a rotary scrubbing machine and 1,200 grit honing powder

Whilst the finish was poor, there was little lippage, so we didn't need to grind the floor smooth. The floor was honed using diamond honing tooling starting at 100 grit and finishing at 3,000 grit before polishing with marble polishing powder and applying an impregnating sealer.

Aggressive Honing Travertine Before Polishing

Travertine lost its shine

Travertine honed and polished

Where the Travertine tiles have a lot of filler, aggressive grinding and honing will remove a lot of the filler in the tiles. Full refilling and honing can be a costly process, so we recommend a light honing starting at 200 grit.

Full refilling and honing can be a costly process, so we recommend a light honing starting at 200 grit.

This light honing will not remove deep scratches and damage, however, it will not remove existing filler and it will not expose new holes in the travertine.

In most cases, light honing is all that is needed to restore a beautiful natural polish on the Travertine. The floor is then sealed with an impregnating sealer.

Grinding Honing Polishing Sealing Travertine

Travertine after grinding

Travertine ground and polished

Grinding honed filled travertine will remove most of the fillers as well as the travertine.

So after a travertine floor has been ground, the tiles need to be filled with hard epoxy or grout.

If the tiles are filled with epoxy, the epoxy will polish to a high shine.

If the tiles are filled with grout, the grout will not polish and remain dull.

So if you are considering grinding your travertine floor, we recommend filling with epoxy filler as you will get a better finish and a harder filling material.

However, this process is generally costly and time-consuming. In many cases, the costs of restoration will be mare than the cost of laying new tiles.

The work shown in the photos shows the results of grinding a travertine floor and the end results.

In this case, the client wanted a smooth polished floor and did not want the upheaval of removing the existing tiles and replacing them with new tiles.

Vein Cut Travertine Cleaning And Polishing

Vein Cut Travertine Dull

Vein Cut Travertine Polished

The cost can range from £45+ per square metre, which we call a full restoration.

Vein cut travertine tiles are cut from the end-grain of the stone to give their distinctive finish. Originally I had called this section

In most cases the holes are left to be a feature of the finish, however, the holes can be filled with hard epoxy or grout if you prefer.

Just like face cut tile, vein cut tiles can be cleaned and sealed to a dull, mid-sheen or finish. Or they can be honed and polished to a high gloss finish

In general, floors with lippage above 2mm will need to be ground smooth before the floor can be honed and polished.

A floor will also need to be ground if it has deep scratches and damage that can not be removed by honing.

Cleaning Tumbled Travertine Tiles

Vein Cut Travertine Dull

Vein Cut Travertine Polished

Tumbled travertine tiles have the natural holes exposed. Tiles can be dull or honed to give the surface a light sheen.

Tumbled travertine tiles can be really difficult to keep clean, especially if they are not sealed properly, or if the original seal has worn away.

The holes and crevices that make this kind of travertine so beautiful are the major source of disappointment. They trap dust, grease, soil and dirty water from daily mopping. Over time they turn from beautiful features to embarrasing black ugly marks

Aggressive mopping, and using a scrubbing brush will not remove all the soil from the holes and crevices. All it will do is push more dirt and soil into the holes.

Holes can also get bigger as the edges break away or the filler comes out.

But all is not lost, proper cleaning and using the right sealer can make a tumbled travertine floor look beautiful again and much easier to keep clean.

The only way to remove the ingrained is with heavy duty cleaners and specialist cleaning equipment.

First a suitable deep cleaner is applied and this is scrubbed into the stone to release the soil particles into a slurry. Now the issue is removing the dirty slurry. A wet vacuum will remove the slurry from most of the holes, but it can't remove slurry that is trapped in deep holes and small pits. The only way to get at this soil is to use pressurised hot water. Our "clean and capture" equipment sprays hot water onto the stone. This gets into the holes and pits, rinsing out the slurry and soil. Once the floor is dry it is sealed with a sealer best suited to your situation

Travertine Work Tops - Travertine Vanity Units

As well as restoring travertine floors, we also restore countertops, worktops and vanity units. In most cases the travertine suffers from etch marking, causing dull rough spots on the nice shiny surface.

Etching is damage caused by acidic liquids spilling onto the stone. It is surprising how many standard household liquids are acidic for example; tea, coffee, fizzy drinks like colas, fruit juices, vinegar, milk, water rings, hand soaps. Many of these liquids are common in kitchens and bathrooms, exactly where homeowners love to use travertine!

This travertine vanity unit had a large etch mark from watermarking and attempts to remove it.

We restored the finish by honing the travertine with honing pads and honing powders. Finally, we used polishing powders to restore the beautiful shine.

Vein Cut Travertine Polished

How To Clean Travertine - A Quick Introduction

Once your floor is restored to its original beauty, you will only keep it looking beautiful and shiny if you clean it properly.

That means you need to dry sweep your floors on a daily basis to remove grit and surface soil. Ideally, you should also damp mop on a daily basis with specialist travertine cleaning chemicals and a microfiber mop. You can find out more here..

Take care with "off the shelf travertine tile cleaners"

You could cause a whole load of problems for you, your floor and your wallet....

A neutral stone cleaner is ideal clean travertine on a daily basis. It is great for cleaning and nourishing your floor to keep it looking beautiful. But travertine is a natural stone, like limestone and marble. It has fine pores and fissures in the surface that can fill up with fine dirt particles. Daily maintenance products are not recommended to clean travertine with dirt that has built up over time in the pores of the tiles and grout.

When you have this kind of deeply ingrained soil, you need the help of specialist heavy duty travertine cleaners

Heavy Duty Cleaners Dissolve Travertine Sealers

Heavy-duty stone cleaners are great for surfaces with ingrained dirt, BUT they need to be rinsed off quickly because they contain chemicals that will dissolve sealers, leaving that area of your floor open to attack from spills and stains.

This is why, if you have ingrained soil, you're always better off using a professional stone cleaning company like Abbey. We know the best cleaners to use and more importantly how to use them.

Travertine comes in a number of different finishes. At ABBEY we have been cleaning, polishing and sealing travertine floors for over 16 years. We have the equipment and experience to transform any travertine floor into a beautiful centrepiece for any room.

Cleaning Tumbled Travertine

Filling Tumbled Travertine

Tumbled travertine tiles have the natural holes exposed. Tiles can be dull or honed to give the surface a light sheen.

Tumbled travertine tiles can be really difficult to keep clean, especially if they are not sealed properly, or if the original seal has worn away.

Aggressive mopping, and using a scrubbing brush will not remove all the soil from the holes and crevices. All it will do is push more dirt and soil into the holes.

Holes can also get bigger as the edges break away or the filler comes out.

But all is not lost, proper cleaning and using the right sealer can make a tumbled travertine floor look beautiful again and much easier to keep clean.

The only way to remove the ingrained is with heavy duty cleaners and specialist cleaning equipment.

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