Cleaning the floors in our homes is one of the most tedious household tasks – nobody wants to carry a heavy vacuum upstairs, or mop a floor and end up in an unplanned game of the floor is lava when you realise you’ve left your phone in that room! Nevertheless, it’s extremely important to keep flooring as clean as possible given how quickly it can become dirty and full of unseen germs – it’s especially important when you have children and pets.

We wanted to find out how the UK public went about cleaning their flooring, and whether they’re following best practice to keep their floors as clean as they possibly can be.

Almost 30% of the UK public don’t clean their carpet

Shockingly, 27% of respondents said they don’t clean their carpets. It should go without saying, but there are a range of risks that come with not cleaning your carpeted floor such as skin irritation, weakened immune system, shortness of breath, and much more.

The majority of respondents (27.5%) said they just vacuum their floor, just under 20% vacuum and spot-clean their carpets, and 3.8% spot-clean only.

Almost 15% of respondents use a carpet cleaner, which usually steam cleans carpets – this is one of the most effective ways to clean carpets as it removes over 90% of dirt and bacteria from carpeting. It’s a common misconception that steam cleaning carpets too often can damage them, but this is not the case.

As well as steam cleaning carpets, it’s important to vacuum them often and spot clean accordingly.

The number of times you should vacuum and clean carpets differ depending on different factors such as foot traffic, pets, etc. However, as a rule of thumb, the more carpets are vacuumed and cleaned, the better. A big reason why vacuuming takes a lot of time and effort is due to having multiple floors to clean on different levels – nobody wants to carry a bulky vacuum cleaner up the stairs! There are a wide range of lightweight, but still powerful, vacuum cleaners out there that can make this challenge much easier, such as the Proscenic P11 Smart Cordless Vacuum.

The majority of the public clean hard floors thoroughly.

Not only did our survey reveal that people don’t clean their carpets, but it also revealed that 17.8% don’t clean their hard floors.

Thankfully, the top answer was that people brush, hoover, and mop hardwood flooring, with 26.7% of respondents answering this. There’s no rule of whether you have to vacuum, brush or both – it is important to do one if not both before mopping to ensure any loose dirt is gone, however doing both definitely doesn’t hurt.

Around 37% of respondents claimed to not mop their hard flooring and either brush, vacuum, or both (or don’t clean it at all!) Although it is important to vacuum and/or brush to get rid of crumbs, loose dirt, pet hair etc. before mopping, it’s extremely important to wet clean any hard floors as this removes dirt, grime, spillages etc. and also keeps floors sparkling clean.

Cleaning hard flooring is extremely unexciting and time-consuming due to having to use multiple cleaning methods, which can be difficult for those with busy lifestyles. However, there are products out there that can really speed this process up such as the Proscenic M8 Pro Robot Vacuum Cleaner – this product automatically vacuums homes, meaning you can leave this running whilst you are out. The M8 Pro also vacuums and mops together, keeping hard floors as clean as possible at once.

16% of the UK public NEVER clean their floors

Our survey asked the UK public how often they clean their floors, to which 16.4% of respondents said ‘never.’

In cleaner news, ‘weekly’ was the top answer with 35.4%, followed by ‘daily’ which was chosen by 34.4% of respondents. It’s great to see that the majority of the UK public are regularly cleaning their flooring – as mentioned, not keeping on top of this can bring a range of health issues.

Just over 2% of respondents said they clean their flooring once to twice a year.

It’s difficult to say what the ‘correct’ regularity for cleaning floors should be as it depends on many factors such as the amount of traffic the flooring sees, the material, etc. However, as with most things, the more it is cleaned, the better it is. However, cleaning flooring daily, or even weekly, is extremely difficult to keep up with, especially for those who work full time and have children or other commitments – it’s great that there is a range of products out there that can make this a much easier task.