Vinyl plank flooring has become a very popular type of flooring because they look like hardwood floor without the expense. Vinyl plank flooring is a cheap alternative to hardwood floor with all the features except the cost.

Vinyl plank flooring is often referred to as luxury vinyl, and just like any other type of floor, it can get scratched from daily wear and tear.

Knowing how to repair scratches on luxury vinyl flooring is a must if you are to keep your floor looking good for a long time. Fortunately, the process of repairing simple scratches in vinyl plank flooring is easy and inexpensive.

How To Repair Scratches On Luxury Vinyl Flooring

There are different procedures to repair scratches on luxury vinyl flooring, and they depend on how severe the scratches are.

Clean Out The Area

Before we get into the fixing process, you need to start out by cleaning the area to be repaired. You also need to find the depth of the scratches because  Sometimes, simply giving your floor a good sweeping and mopping can remove the scratches. So if you have light scratches, you are in luck.

You can purchase a floor cleaner that is specifically formulated to help buff out scratches in luxury vinyl flooring. Using this type of cleaner to regularly mop your floor will help to get rid of surface scratches. So that if there are deeper scratches, it becomes easy to identify.

If, after cleaning your vinyl flooring with the floor cleaner and there are still scratches, you will need to put in a little more elbow grease. Most time, just giving your floor a hard scrub will buff out deep surface scratches, and you won’t need to have them filled.

Waxing

After cleaning the area thoroughly with a floor cleaner and there are still visible scratches, you may need to fill them with a wax stick. Wax sticks are designed for filling in scratches on wood, laminate, and vinyl flooring. You can purchase them at any hardware store.

So after a thorough cleaning, Run the wax stick over the scratched area. Make sure to apply special pressure when filling in deep scratches. After applying the wax all over the area, you will need to clean it up afterward.

When purchasing the wax sticks, you need to make sure that it matches the color of your luxury vinyl flooring.

If you can’t find the exact color, you can buy different colors to create a custom color that matches your floor. This enables the wax to be much more likely to be able to fix the scratches on your floor.

Buffing

After smearing the wax all over the scratches, you will have to buff the area thoroughly. This helps to spread the wax evenly throughout the floor and remove the edges of the scratches. It also helps to fill in the gaps between any grain or texturing of the flooring.

To buff your floor, you will need a cloth and a whole lot of elbow grease. You are also going to need quite some time so that you can thoroughly buff the floor. Try to buff your an adequate amount of time using firm pressure so that you are able to take the edge off the scratches.

For a more thorough buffing job, you can make use of an electric buffer. This machine will offer you the most power and will help to make the scratches removal more effective, plus it reduces the time and energy you would spend bending over to buff your floor with a cloth.

Replacing Damaged Vinyl Plank

If the scratches are very deep, you might need to refinish that area of your floor. And thankfully, you may not need to replace the entire floor, only the planks that have really deep gouges. Although this process is a bit costly, it won’t be as bad as replacing the entire floor. 

To determine if an area of your floor needs refinishing, start by trying out any of the above methods, and if the scratches persist, you may need to go in with a very high-grit sandpaper to sand down the area as well as some of the wax stick. Then repeat any of the steps above to polish your floor.

If you really need to replace your floor, you can choose to replace individual planks or sections of the vinyl flooring. You do not have to replace the entire floor if the gouge is only in one area.

Refinishing Your Vinyl Floor

If the scratch on your floor cannot be repaired, you will need to completely refinish the floor.

There are a couple of ways you can go about refinishing your entire floor, and you can either hire a professional to do it or do it yourself, but you have to keep in mind the magnitude of the project you are about to undertake and properly weigh your options.

Refinishing an entire floor is not an easy job, and before you undertake it, you need to be sure that it’s going to be worth it. And if you are pretty convinced that you can take on the job, you can start looking for how to go about it.

To Refinish your floor, you would need to completely remove any vinyl flooring. After the floor has been stripped, you will need to replace it with a new floor surface. There are different instructional videos on YouTube that you can learn the entire process from.

How To Prevent Scratches On Your Vinyl Floor

There are different ways to prevent scratches on your luxury vinyl floor. If you have children or pets, this process might be a little bit more difficult. However, there are some general rules you can apply to help prevent scratches from occurring at all.

One of these methods is to create a no-shoe zone rule. The heels of shoes can scratch your floor as they glide through, and sometimes small pieces of stone or dirt can get stuck in the soles of shoes and scratch your floor as you walk past.

Although it might take some time for you or members of your household to get used to this rule, you should be able to start seeing a great improvement in the condition of your floor. This rule can be applied to different flooring surfaces.

Another way to prevent scratches on your luxury vinyl flooring is by placing felt pads or rubber feet on the furniture. This is because the movement of furniture can also scratch up vinyl flooring. Covering the feet of the furniture with pads or felt will help to keep them from scratching your floor.

Read: How to tackle heavy furniture on vinyl plank flooring

Conclusion

Although vinyl plank flooring is very durable, over time, they begin to receive scratches due to wear and tear. This can make your floor look really disfigured and old; fortunately, there are ways on how to repair scratches on luxury vinyl flooring that do not require too many tools or expertise. 

The method you will need to remove scratches on your vinyl floor totally depends on how severe the scratches are.