Cleaning Pads
Traditional Scrub Pads
The most popular cleaning pads are traditional scrub pads, available in black, brown, green, red, white, pink, etc. These pads are typically made with a non-woven polyester base. Some specialty products, such as the 3M Clean and Shine Pad or the Americo Smart Scrub Pad, also impregnate the base with silicon carbide and mineral abrasives to extend their lifespan and enhance cleaning performance.
How to Choose the Right Scrub Pad Based on Color
White and Pink
These are the softest and least abrasive scrub pads, suitable for polishing and crystallizing floors. Suitable for machines with speeds of 1000-3000 RPM. They are suitable for various floor materials such as concrete, terrazzo, stone, marble, granite, PVC, VCT, LVT, rubber floors, and tile floors.
Red
This is the most popular scrub pad for everyday cleaning and rinsing, and can also be used for floor polishing and crystallizing. Suitable for floor scrubbers and single-scrubbers with speeds of 150-600 RPM. Suitable for all floor types.
Green/Blue
These are coarser than red scouring pads, making them suitable for deep cleaning, removing some surface coatings and scratches, but not to the point of dewaxing. Suitable for low-speed machines, such as floor scrubbers and 150-350 RPM single-scrubbers. Not recommended for daily cleaning of resilient floors such as PVC, VCT, or LVT.
Black/Brown
These are typically the coarsest and sharpest scouring pads. These dark-colored pads are designed for dewaxing and deep cleaning jobs. You can use them to remove old wax, stubborn stains, abrasions, and coatings. Most floor dewaxing work occurs on resilient floors such as PVC, linoleum, VCT, and LVT, so you’ll need to use these pads to remove old wax and coatings before recoating. For this type of work, a square vibrating machine is the best choice; heavy-duty single-scrubbers are commonly used domestically. Do not use them for daily cleaning.
There are other types of mats, such as animal hair mats, which contain pig hair, horse hair, and polyester fibers. These are also cleaning mats, but we won’t go into detail here. They are typically used for ultra-high speed (UHS) polishing (if they are soft animal hair mats).
Diamond Cleaning Mats
Traditional floor mats are suitable for dewaxing, deep cleaning, daily cleaning, polishing, and high-speed polishing. They are an economical option, but if you want to increase the shine of your floor, they must be used in conjunction with floor polishing chemicals or crystallizing pastes or liquids. And most scouring pads don’t last that long.
Now, diamond cleaning mats have arrived. They are made by impregnating billions of diamond particles into a traditional scouring pad base. Using these diamond mats, you can easily increase the shine of your floor during cleaning, simply by adding water, without chemicals, and their lifespan is typically 3-5 times longer than ordinary floor mats.
How to Choose the Right Diamond Mat
Grit size (mesh) is a value used to measure the roughness of diamond particles. Generally, the smaller the number, the coarser the diamond particles. Therefore, let’s remember the following rules:
≤200 grit: Very coarse and very sharp, suitable for heavy-duty dewaxing and removal.
400 grit: Coarse and sharp, suitable for deep cleaning.
800 grit: Medium coarse, suitable for floor scrubbing and maintenance.
1500 grit: Fine, not sharp, suitable for polishing and daily cleaning.
≥3000 grit: Very fine, especially suitable for daily cleaning, polishing, and high-speed polishing.
