How to Protect Your Hardwood Flooring from Summer Damage

How to Protect Your Hardwood Flooring from Summer Damage

Summertime has already arrived and you’re all ready to welcome the sun! As the daytime extends, it’s the perfect time to enjoy a vacation with your family and friends. But extra daytime in the summer means more heat and harmful UV rays that can bring noticeable damage to your flooring.

The hot sunny days can cause a bit of anxiety to a homeowner like you, especially when you have hardwood flooring in your house. The summer season can lead to several pesky problems for your floors if you aren’t careful. Hardwood is vulnerable to sun and humidity damage. The extreme heat and shift in moisture can cause it to buckle, cup, and warp while UV rays can cause fading and discolouration of the floor surface.

In today’s blog post, we’ll share some expert tips on protecting hardwood flooring from summer damage.

Regulate Indoor Air Quality

Since the moisture content in the air increases significantly during the hot summer days, you need to take special care of your hardwood flooring. Proper acclimation of hardwood to the environment is very important before installation because it prevents it from warping and cupping. If your flooring is already installed, make sure to maintain the indoor air quality with a dehumidifier or an AC.

Remember that if moisture and humidity levels aren’t maintained or controlled in your indoors, they can gradually affect the structure and properties of your hardwood floors, thereby leading to rotting and mould formation over time. You’ll need to replace your hardwood floor in such cases as general sanding and refinishing won’t do any good.

Use Appropriate Window Treatments

Negate the harmful effects of the summer sun on your hardwood flooring by installing proper window treatments. Keep your curtains or shades closed during the daytime. In case you have horizontal blinds, make sure to keep the angle of the slats upward so that the sunlight is directed on the walls and not on the floor. You can also use tinted glass or special protective films on your windows to block the damaging UV rays.

Rearrange Your Furniture and Area Rugs

Direct sunlight exposure will result in a discoloured floor. If you can’t block sunlight in your indoors completely, you should take some steps to ensure that your hardwood floor age evenly under the sun during this time. Rearrange your furniture and area rugs often in your living spaces so that the floor surface in a single area isn’t always exposed to the sun. If you allow this, it’ll fade or discolour the floor surface of that area, no matter you have an oil finish or a polyurethane finish, making the rest of your hardwood floor appear noticeably darker.

Some Additional Tips

• Besides window treatments, you can use indoor plants to offer some shade to the over-exposed areas of your hardwood floor.
• You can build skylights in your room to light it up naturally instead of having windows to minimize sun damage to your floor.
• Make sure to refinish your floor regularly without waiting for any damage to happen first.
• Spending time outdoors is very common during the summers. Place mats at the entryways to protect the floor surface from dust, dirt, grime, and gravel.

Follow these tips to keep your hardwood flooring in good shape during the summer months. If your existing floor has already been affected by the summer sun in the previous years, get them repaired by experienced hardwood flooring professionals. The experts can give you the right advice after examining the condition of your floor and help you get them back to its original shape.

If you want to buy high-quality hardwood flooring in Toronto, reach out to AA Floors at 524 Evans Eve. We’re open on Mondays to Fridays from 8:00 AM – 6:30 PM and on Saturdays from 9:30 AM – 3:30 PM.