Skip links

Gym Floor Maintenance: why it matters

In a gym, clean floors do more than make a facility look good. They help athletes and others perform their best. In a typical gym, each person tracks in up to 7 pounds of dirt each year. An area that collects only one pound of dirt in the summer may collect up to 15 pounds of dirt in the winter. Proper gym floor maintenance includes using safe, effective techniques to clean and care for flooring to ensure its longevity and athlete safety.

Why Gym Floors Need Regular Professional Floor Maintenance

Protect floor finishes

Loose dirt and dust are often the greatest causes of wear on wood floors. So, regular care extends a gym floor’s life and finish. The longer gym flooring goes unmaintained, the more difficult it is to restore when the time comes for a re-coat.

Increased safety

Healthy gym floors have good surface-level traction, allowing athletes to shine as brightly as the flooring. Up to 90 percent of slip-related issues on gym floors are due to a lack of maintenance or using the wrong cleaners.

Compliment custodial staff expertise

While your janitorial staff may be great at what they do, they may not have the experience, training or expertise needed to care for or maintain premium gym floors. As a result, they may end up doing too much or not enough, which can be detrimental. Or, they may not have enough time to dedicate to a gym floor’s daily, weekly, monthly, or annual needs. When floor maintenance professionals care for your gym flooring, your custodial workers are able to focus on what they do best.

How to Maintain Your Gym Floors

Daily care is a must

Gym floors, even when they sit untouched, get dirty every day. This is due to the dirt and dust that naturally circulate in the air and settle on the floor, particularly in older buildings. Daily care of a gym floor involves at least dust mopping daily—regardless of how often anyone steps foot on the flooring—and damp mopping as needed. Depending on the amount of traffic, it may be necessary to dust mop a gym floor multiple times a day. Daily care is also essential to preserving a floor’s finish, particularly when a facility’s budget does not allow for annual re-coating. Daily care is one of the best, most-cost effective ways to keep a gym floor looking and performing its best.

Recoating is a necessary investment

Whether a gym has concrete floors or a wood court, regular recoating is a necessary task. Like daily care, recoating prevents the need for restorative tasks that are exponentially more expensive, such as re-sanding. Keep in mind that re-coating may need to occur more than once a year, depending on the amount of wear that the finish experiences.

Prevent cross-contamination

Gym floors, particularly wood courts, rarely ever need a wet mop and bucket to stay clean. This technique is more time-consuming, may damage the flooring and poses the risk of cross-contamination. Cross-contamination occurs when someone mops a bathroom, for example, and uses the same mop head or dirty water to clean the gym’s floor. Moreover, the chemicals used to clean bathroom and hallway floors may damage a gym’s floor, making it hazy-looking, sticky or slippery.

Everyone deserves to walk on a clean and safe gym floor. When a custodial crew doesn’t have the time or expertise to care for a gym floor’s specific needs, work with a commercial cleaning company to ensure your investment receives the proactive attention it deserves.

The specialists at Cleansolution can make this happen with a custom program tailored to your exact needs. In addition to floor cleaning and maintenance services, our experienced technicians seal and finish gym floors to improve their durability and make them shine again. Contact us today to learn more about how we’ll make your gym flooring look incredible!