How Does Polishing And Buffing Tile Floors Differ?

Maintaining shiny and attractive floors would require more than just using a mop and bucket. Floor polishing and buffing are two techniques that restore the sparkle of tiles and other floors like marble, hardwood, etc.

While both buffing and polishing are performed to get shiny floors, the two techniques generate different results of the right machines. For instance, you must always choose proper buffing machine for tile floors.

Appliances

A flooring buffer appears such as a vacuum cleaner yet has handlebars and a bigger body. Inside its body are motorized brushes which spin at adjustable speeds for polishing clean floors.

Some buffers feature handlebar controls for assisting in steering the buffer into different spaces. Floor polishers are similar to buffers, but are heavier, providing extra pressure that helps generate a wet-look gloss.

Rather than moving from side to side, polishers run in a straight line, moving back and forth. Additionally, being heavier, a polisher’s engine is more complicated to generate higher speed.

Buffing

Floor buffing uses proper machine for cleaning the floor. While you need to clean the floor before buffing, its squeegees in the back assist in gathering moisture and dirt left behind.

Buffing may be performed at low or high speeds. Standard buffer machines also run at 175RPM. A high speed buffer might operate from 1250 to as much as 1500 RPM. While buffing restores some smoothness and gloss to the tile floor, it doesn’t accomplish the wet-gloss look of polishing.

So, if you don’t want that wet gloss look for your tiles, you can choose buffing machine for tile floors carefully.

Polishing Or Burnishing

While buffing might refer to cleaning and polishing, burnishing is polishing the floor at a great speed to generate optimal shine. The additional polish is for the burnisher’s high speed, which may operate from 1500 to 2500 RPM. Burnishing often gets performed after buffing for accomplishing the wet-look gloss.

Difference Between Buffing And Polishing

Along with creating more gloss, burnishing polishes the floor faster than buffing. Polishing 10,000 sq-ft flooring using a buffer requires 25 labor hours when utilizing a 20 inch floor machine running at 350 RPM.

Even though burnishers work faster than buffing machine for tile floors, you must properly take care to apply enough finish coats or the flooring would be worn.

How Often Should You Use Buffing Machine For Tile Floors?

For commercial areas having high foot traffic it is possible for you to use the buffing machine for tile floors once every month. It will keep the floors looking shiny and new, which your clients and employees would appreciate.

The more often the more floors are buffed, the better will it look. Also, buffing helps in maintaining a floor’s longevity. Steady buffing extracts a build-up of debris, scratches, gunk, etc that wear down tile floors over a period of time.

However, when it comes to tile floors, you need to be more careful. It is because tile floors are usually slippery and making it glossier can increase the chance of accidents. For that, polishing isn’t needed and buffing would suffice perfectly.