Get Scratches Out of Your Hardwood Floor

There’s just no getting around it—your hardwood floors are going to get dings, scratches, gouges, and scrapes. This is especially true if you have children or pets. The good news is that certain scratches you get in your hardwood floor can be covered up and cleaned to the point where they basically disappear.

For lighter scratches

Always clean and scrub the floor before starting the process. Once the area in question has dried, you can use an acrylic or wax floor polish to cover the scratches. Be generous is the application, though; too much of this sort of remedy can eventually make your floors darker and acrylic is not easy to get off of your floor.

A simpler solution would be to coat your floor with one of the many products on the market that will renew the look of the wood. You can find several of these at any home repair store. If you make a point to use these solutions every few months, you will also find that it helps to prevent future scratches. Lastly, make sure your floor is not a wood laminate, as these solutions can damage it.

For deeper scratches

While deeper scratches are certainly more unsightly than a lighter scratch, these can easily be maintained, too. By filling your deep scratches in with stain, you don’t really remove the stain but it is next to impossible to see. The trick, of course, is finding a stain that is the exact color of your floor. When applying the stain, use a Q-tip or a very small brush.

You can also find special stain markers or pencils that can make this job a bit easier.

For gouges

These are those gouges that simply hurt to look at. While these can be a bit more difficult to repair, it can usually be knocked out by a precolored latex wood filler. Just like the stains mentioned above, be sure that the filler you select matches the shade of your floor. Spread the filler into the gouge with a putty knife and then make sure you give it enough time to dry. Next, use sandpaper (of the fine grit variety) to smooth it out. You may need to finish this job off by placing  abit of thinned varnish over the repaired gouge.