Let’s talk about dance floor maintenance for a moment. Having a maintenance program for your dance floor is important for the safety and well-being of your dancers and instructors. Keeping your floors consistent and clean takes a little bit of planning. You also need the right products that have been formulated specifically for wood and marley dance floors.
Building Your Cleaning Regimen
The number one priority with dance floor maintenance is building a cleaning regimen that you can do consistently. In order to keep your floor consistent, you need to be consistent, too. In order to keep your floors safe, they also need to be disinfected. Therefore, what you do daily, weekly, monthly or even every 6 months or annually is important. However, cleaning regimens vary from studio to studio, because studios vary in size and usage.
Once you have figured out how frequently and to what degree of thoroughness you need to clean (also accounting for disinfecting against COVID-19, flu, and other viruses), write down your cleaning regimen. Whether you have a professional cleaning firm come in or you do it yourself, having the steps listed out, as well as dedicated products and cleaning supplies, is essential.
Daily & Weekly Cleaning
Regardless of how often your studio is used and how many students come and go weekly, there is something you should always do daily: dry mopping.
Dry mop in the morning and clean any spots that are slippery with a detergent degreaser, such as ProClean™. If you find that your floor is inherently slippery, use ProClean NS™. Any dye marks or scuffs that appear on the dance floor should also be dealt with as soon as possible, because they will become ingrained into the floor over time. For dye marks and scuffing, Wipeout Plus™ is recommended.
You should also clean the entire floor once a week with ProClean or ProClean NS.
Deep Cleaning The Dance Floor
Depending on the volume of activity within the studio, you may need to deep clean every few months. For most, a biannual or annual deep cleaning will suffice. For that, there is ProClean Ultra™, which is used together with a floor machine and red microfiber pad.
Have a dedicated mop and pail for your dance floor. Never use the same cleaning supplies that you do for the rest of the studio. Microfiber mops and pads are best for floors, since they pick up more debris.
What Not To Use On Your Floor
There are a couple of things you should not do in terms of maintenance. One of those things is putting water on the marley or wood floor. A lot of studios will put water on the floor to keep shoes from slipping or to clean off the dirt. Here is the problem with that: perspiration and oil.
Oil and water do not mix, which means that cleaning with water is merely spreading the oil over a larger surface. In other words, more slippery patches. A sign that your floor has oily spots is a satin sheen on the marley.
Other products you should never use on floors include bleach, household detergents, vinegar, or anything that is going to apply a shine, sheen, or film. All of these can make the floor dangerously slippery or damage it.
Analyzing Your Floor’s Needs
Another part of maintenance is figuring out how the environment affects your dance floor. Temperature, humidity, and debris brought in from the outside can make a floor dirty. The environment can, for instance, affect the speed at which dancers slide across it (coefficient of friction).
If your studio is a high humidity environment, purchase a dehumidifier. Control the temperature so that your floors do not get warped or start to bubble. Place mats at the entrance of the building and outside each of the studios to prevent dirt from getting onto the floors. You should also be careful about leaving windows open, about the heat generated by skylights (as UV exposure can damage vinyl floors and semi-permanent tape).
Maintaining your floor also means swapping out the top tape on your semi-permanent installations every 4 months and getting rid of the leftover adhesive residue with WipeOut Plus. If you leave the residue alone, it will gather on shoes, collect dirt, and make a bigger mess.
Conclusion
Dance floor maintenance is very important to keep your floors consistent and safe for whatever activities take place in your studio. Controlling the environment and assessing the needs of the floor are just as essential as daily, weekly, and deep cleaning practices. Looking for dance floor cleaning supplies or have questions about which supplies are best for your studio? Give StageStep a call. You can also read our Maintenance Guide online or request a free copy.
