10 tips for cleaning slate

How to clean and maintain slate?

With slate, you can dress up your floors, sinks, worktops, walls and more. Of course, slate is a material that has been used for a very long time and unfortunately we do not always know how to properly maintain and clean it.

10-Trucs offers below several good tips and products for cleaning slate at home and outside.

1. Care and cleaning of natural slate

Slate, like other natural stones, requires a lot of maintenance to maintain its beautiful appearance, color and shine. So before moving on to cleaning tips to remove stubborn stains, here are some tips for maintaining your slate easily.

For a slate floor:

Use a microfiber broom to remove dust and other dirt from the surface. You can lightly dampen the broom to dislodge small surface stains on the slate.

For a slate worktop:

As for the slate floor, use the microfiber, but this time in the form of a damp cloth to clean slate counters, objects and worktops.

It is important to dust and clean the surface often to prevent stains from settling into the slate.

2. Maintain the slate with microfiber

As mentioned above, the microfiber cloth or broom is ideal for cleaning and daily maintenance of the slate. 10-trucs.com offers you quality micro-fiber cloths which, above all, leave no lint or traces on the natural stone.

Buy a set of microfiber cloths:

Microfiber is ideal for polishing different natural stone surfaces as you will discover here: How to clean raw granite? and How to make marble shine?

Buy a microfiber broom:

3. A baking soda cleaning tip

For a more in-depth cleaning or simply to clean a slate surface that is very dirty and stained by time, the following tip is very effective. Here’s how to pull off this cleaning trick:

• Mix 200 ml of baking soda with 1 liter of water
• Use this solution with your broom or cloth and then rub the surface
• Rinse with warm warm water
• Dry well to finish cleaning the slate

To be even more effective you can do a first rinse with a mixture of water and vinegar. Ideal for a very dirty floor or worktop.

4. Remove white and lime stains from natural slate

Do you notice the presence of white stain or lime stain on your beautiful slate? Removing limescale from slate is not that complicated if you know a few good tips and tricks.

So here is how to remove lime stains:

• Mix warm water, liquid dish soap and white vinegar
• Add vegetable oil to the mixture and scrub the lime stains
• Rinse and dry well to finish cleaning

Now here is how to remove stubborn white spots:

• Add 200 ml of black soap to 4 liters of water
• Clean and rub the entire surface, insisting on the white spots
• Rinse with clean water and dry the slate to finish

Whether it is to clean the slate or other surface and material inside and outside the house, here is black soap at the best price:

Black soap is useful on several types of surfaces including concrete as you will discover here: How to clean a concrete patio?

5. Remove a grease stain from the slate

Removing a grease stain from slate or other natural stones is possible with baking soda.

• Sprinkle baking soda on the slate
• Dampen a quackgrass brush and scrub the grease stain
• Rinse the slate to remove the baking soda

Particularly effective for cleaning tiles and slate tiles outdoors. For a slate surface in the house it is better to use a soft brush or a sponge so as not to scratch the surface.

6. Color the slate

Has the slate lost its luster and shine over the years? Black slate can actually lose its beautiful glossy color if frequent maintenance and cleaning is not done.

One solution to accentuate the color of your slate is the application of a turpentine wax. Turpentine wax is mostly used to beautify and protect wooden furniture and more old antique furniture. But you can also use it to shine and accentuate the black of the slate. Here’s how:

• Clean the surface with a damp microfiber cloth
• Rub and polish the slate with a new cloth and a little turpentine wax

You can buy turpentine wax in jars but also in aerosols. Even more efficient and faster for polishing slate.