Many people often use wood floor polish without understanding the basics of their wood floor and the different types of polish. Polishes can create waxy layers on your floor, soak in and create stains that you cannot remove. Knowing the finish type of your floor can assist you in properly choosing a wood floor polish. The different finish types in wood floors consist of tung oil, shellac, polyurethane, and waxed.

Wood floor polish like Mop and Glo contain water based acrylic waxes. These types of wood floor polish can give a floor a dirty and patchy look once they begin to wear off. They might make the floor look good at first, but when they wear, it looks bad. If you have a waxed floor, these polishes are good for a waxed wood finish. However, before applying new wood floor polish, you will need to strip the wax and apply a new coat of high quality wax. Stripping the wax doesn't always remove all of the wax. If you apply wax to a floor that is not waxed, you should continue to apply the wax because you will never really get all of the wax out.

A floor refinisher can be used as wood floor wax and will only need to use a couple of times a year if your floor has never had wax laid on it.

Prior to the use of wood floor polish, your wood floors should be tested for soundness. This can be done by applying drops of water on the wood floor. If the water remains as beads on top of the wood, then you have sound wood. If the water soaks into the wood and creates a dark stain in the wood, then the hard wood is not sound. This will determine the type of wood floor finish you would consider using on your wood floor also. Because if your floor stains with water, then you do not want to use a wood floor finish that is water based. This will stain your wood floors and cause problems.

Wood reacts differently to different types of wood floor polish. The type of wood must be considered and the type of wood floor polishes.