How important is your vacuum cleaner?

We all know that keeping floors clean in the home is essential, but how important is your vacuum cleaner?  Does it really matter which one you have?

What vacuum cleaner is best for carpets?

It is important to keep carpets clean, for a number of reasons.  It helps keep your home healthy by removing the inevitable dust, dirt,allergens and bacteria that build up.  Vacuuming is by far by the best way to clean carpets, and needs to be done thoroughly and regularly to maintain a clean living space.

The better you maintain your carpet, the better it will look and last.  The backing of the carpet can actually be eroded by dirt over time, as it has abrasive qualities when ground in by foot traffic everyday.  Carpets need to be vacuumed once a week at a minimum, and more if you have pets or in rooms with heavy foot traffic.

Your vacuum cleaner is important as it needs to do the job properly to remove all the dust, dirt and allergens from the fibres.  It doesn’t need to be a top of the range, expensive one but it does need to have good suction.

When vacuuming. move slowly with a repetitive, overlapping motion in multiple directions to really get the suction working on all the fibres.  This will also help to hide high traffic marks.  Make sure you change the bag on the vacuum or empty it regularly.

An upright vacuum is best for large rooms as it will collect all the dust and dirt that you can’t see.  A cordless, or stick, vacuum is a great addition as it makes cleaning stairs, stair runners and hard to reach areas a lot easier.  For furniture and upholstery, a small handheld vacuum is always handy and makes cleaning up spot messes and pet hair a lot quicker.  You can do all of this with attachments on a  multi-purpose vacuum, but the cordless and handheld ones are effective ways to save time (and your back when it comes to the stairs!) if you want to invest in them.

For cut pile carpets, a vacuum cleaner fitted with a beater bar and/or brushes is recommended and for loop pile carpets, one without a beater bar or brushes is most suitable.  Make sure the height is set correctly before starting.

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Can I use a vacuum on other types of flooring?

Vacuum cleaners aren’t just for carpets, they can take a lot of the hard work out of cleaning most types of flooring.  For hardwood or engineered wood flooring, use a vacuum cleaner once a week to get rid of all the dirt and dust as part of your cleaning regime.

To avoid leaving any scratches, never use any attachments such as beater bars or hard brushes.  In fact, it is best not to use the power upright vacuum cleaner that you would use for carpets at all, because it most likely has a beater bar.  These are designed to stir up the dirt at the base of carpet fibres.  You may be able to turn the beater bar off but there is still the risk of scratches from the wheels.  A cordless vacuum is best as it is light, and many are made specifically to be used on hardwood floors.

Laminate floors are also likely to be scratched by heavy vacuum cleaners and beater bars over time, so again use a light cordless one where possible.  The same is true for  LVT (luxury vinyl tile) flooring.  As with carpet, the better you look after your flooring, the longer it will last.

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How about robotic vacuum cleaners?

Robotic vacuums cleaners like Roombas are great for getting rid of surface level dirt, pet hair and dust without any effort on your part. They need minimal maintenance are they are self-navigating, self-cleaning and self-charging. You simply set them to spot, quick or scheduled cleaning.  One of their great advantages is that they can maneuver themselves under and around most furniture.  Some newer models also have double HEPA filters to pick up all allergens, which is ideal if you have allergy sufferers in the house.

You can use them on carpets and hard floors, they should move from different types of flooring seamlessly.  They are not designed to deep-clean though, for rugs or carpet.

They are not yet able to navigate stairs, so you will have to move them around the levels in a house and use another option to vacuum the stair themselves.  They are not designed to deal with liquids either, so can cause issues with pet bowls and messes.  Another disadvantage of many is that they are noisy and the dust bin needs to be emptied frequently.

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Whatever look you want to achieve in your home, we can help with all your flooring and carpet needs.  Contact us here to book a free estimate with our friendly and professional Herts Carpets team today!

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