Resources and best-practices for maintaining polished concrete floors.

Back in 2016, we built a shop on a road that had 10,000s of cars driving by. I thought “We need to get in the floor cleaning-products business”. So we reached out to our 1000+ customers to put together best practices. 

We found that the cheapest floor cleaners and waxes were the most popular with our customers. That wasn’t very surprising. What was surprising was how much better the cheaper stuff was. We tried it ourselves against the fancier stuff that seemed cool on amazon. The stuff from Dollar General was straight-up better. So I guess I would just encourage you to try cheap stuff or encourage you to try a lot of things yourself. 

The best wet and dry flat mops for daily cleaning are by Norwex. You may “find a consultant” to buy from with this link. 

Building up the stain-guard may make your floor more vulnerable to scuffs, scratches and efflorescence. Tt will be shinier and more stain resistant though. There are no bad polished concrete stain guards. We believe AmeriPolish is currently the best. SP is easier to apply; SR2 is probably better (though make sure to not apply it thicker than 2000sf/gal.) Ameripolish SP can be purchased with this amazon link. Ameripolish SR2 can be purchased with this amazon link. 

Both of those materials should be applied with a microfiber pad for applying finishes (flat mop equivalent of a rayon finish mop). The best one we’ve found is the 3M 55434 18" White Easy Shine Pad. Here is a link for a 2/Pack.

The process of applying stain-guard with a microfiber pad is simple. My friend Nick Dancer made a pretty sweet video showing how to do this 6 years ago. Link here. 

After applying that, it is ideal (but maybe not necessary) to go over the floor with a heavy burnisher fitted with a diamond impregnated pad. However, that equipment is frankly expensive to rent and not easy to move. Sunbelt Rentals has them though (link here).

Polished concrete flooring is the most durable, lowest-maintenance flooring option there is. Nobody (including us) has made this process super simple yet though. I hope this helps you.

Yours truly,  

Cory Hanneman