01225 683687
If you’ve got any questions you can call our friendly team who are waiting to help
If you’ve got any questions you can call our friendly team who are waiting to help
Limestone Floor Cleaning · Bath & Wiltshire
Limestone is soft. It etches. It dulls. And every wrong cleaner makes it worse. We clean, restore and seal limestone floors across Bath and Wiltshire — properly, with the right pH-neutral chemistry, at honest fixed prices.
What’s actually wrong with your floor
Limestone is calcium carbonate. That’s the same thing chalk is made of, and the same thing that reacts violently with anything acidic. So when supermarket cleaner gets used on a Bath limestone hallway week after week, it isn’t just not cleaning the floor — it’s eating the top layer of stone. Slowly. Over years.
That’s why your limestone looks patchy in some places and shiny in others. That’s why the bit by the kitchen sink has gone dull and powdery. That’s why a damp mop leaves streaks that won’t wipe away. The sealer is gone, the surface has opened up, and dirt now lives inside the stone rather than on top of it.
The good news: it almost never needs replacing. A proper deep clean, a light hone where needed, and a fresh impregnating sealer is enough to give you a limestone floor that looks better than it has in ten years. For most floors in Bath, that’s £26/m² — less than half what some restoration companies charge for the same work.
Why limestone is different
Bath stone is itself a limestone — quarried for centuries from Combe Down and Bathampton. So when a Georgian or Regency property in central Bath has a limestone floor, it’s usually been there a long time and matters a lot to the owner.
What makes it tricky: limestone is soft (softer than marble, even). It scratches. It etches in seconds when something acidic touches it. And it’s porous — without a sealer, every spill goes straight in.
This is the stone that needs a craftsperson, not a power-wash.
What we see in Bath limestone
Etched patches. Dull, slightly textured spots where something acidic was spilled — wine, lemon juice, fizzy drink, perfume, vinegar cleaner. Even tomato pasta sauce can do it.
Worn high-traffic lines. A visible track from kitchen to back door where the surface has slowly broken down.
Patchy sheen. Some tiles polished, others matte — uneven sealer or uneven wear.
White haze. Cleaning product residue that won’t come off with normal mopping.
Trapped grime in grout lines. Limestone grout darkens fast without sealing.
Our limestone process
We look at the floor in person. We check the stone, the existing sealer, the grout, the damage level. Fixed quote at the survey.
For older or unusual limestone we test a small area first. You see the result before we commit.
Rotary machine and a cleaner designed for calcium-based stone. No acids, no bleach, no shortcuts.
Light diamond hone removes etch marks and evens the surface. Only where the floor needs it.
An impregnating sealer that protects against acids. Walk on it the same day.
Stop using these on your limestone
Vinegar etches limestone in seconds. The “natural cleaner” advice on Pinterest is wrong for every calcium-based stone.
Same problem as vinegar, often worse because people use it stronger. One spill leaves a permanent dull patch.
Strips the sealer, opens the pores, leaves the stone less protected than before you started.
The heat breaks down sealers. Within a year you’ll have a duller floor than you had before steam-cleaning it.
Made for vinyl. Most contain alkalis or surfactants that strip stone sealers over months.
If you’ve never had your limestone sealed, or it was sealed before you moved in, it’s almost certainly unprotected now.
Limestone questions we get every week
Yes, in almost all cases. Etch marks are surface damage — the acid has dissolved a thin layer of the stone. We use diamond honing pads to take that damaged surface off and reveal fresh, undamaged limestone underneath. Then we seal it. Deep etches (a wine spill left for weeks) may take longer than light etches (a splash of vinegar wiped up quickly), but the principle is the same.
Almost always uneven sealer wear. The shiny tiles still have sealer; the matte ones don’t. Cleaning won’t fix it because it’s not a cleaning problem — it’s a sealing problem. We strip the failed sealer, deep clean, hone to even out the surface, then re-seal the whole floor so it looks uniform again.
If your floor currently has one finish, we’ll keep it that way unless you tell us otherwise. Most Bath limestone is honed (matte) — that’s the traditional finish for the region and what tends to suit Georgian and Regency properties. Polished limestone is rarer domestically and tends to be a bathroom or feature-floor choice. We can do either; just tell us at the survey.
A properly sealed limestone floor that gets pH-neutral cleaning at home shouldn’t need professional restoration more than every 5–7 years. If yours is needing it sooner, the home maintenance is probably the issue — and we’ll show you what to change. We don’t sell maintenance contracts because most limestone floors don’t need them.
Yes, and we see this a lot. DIY polishing usually leaves uneven sheen, swirl marks, or worse — damage from using the wrong abrasive grade. We can reset the floor: strip whatever was applied, hone evenly, and seal properly. Tell us at the survey what was tried and we’ll plan around it.
Not at all — but it does need the right sealer and a household that knows the rules (no vinegar, no lemon, wipe spills fast). Plenty of beautiful limestone kitchen floors across Bath and Wiltshire are 20+ years old and still look stunning because they’ve been looked after. The “limestone in kitchens is a mistake” thing is usually from people who weren’t told how to maintain it.
Get your quote
Fill in the form and we’ll get back to you the same working day. Surveys are free and there’s no obligation to book.
We’re a small team and we usually pick up. If we miss you, leave a message and we’ll call you back.
01225 683687