When you use Murphy’s Oil Soap, you will quickly learn that the advertising claims are fictitious. Obviously, this is not an advisable cleaning method. This is not even cleaning. It is just coating your floors with an oily, sticky residue! If you decide to clean your floors with oil soap, you will notice that in as few as five years, your floors will need to be recoated. The oily residue left behind from oil soap will remain so much so that it may very likely gum up the screening disk when you recoat your floor in the future. Also, the new coating may have adhesion problems. Many homeowners have permanently ruined hardwood floors from using oil soap products.
Despite its popularity, I would not use it on my own wood floors nor would I recommend it. I am talking about sealed hardwood floors. Even though Muphy’s Oil Soap is formulated for sealed hardwood floors, you want to stay far away from it! As you now know, Murphy’s Oil Soap makes many misleading and false claims that sound convincing to anyone who has not done adequate research. For example, it promises to leave no residue behind. It is also supposed to remove wax build-up.
If you decide to give Murphy’s Oil Soap a try, the next step will be learning how to remove it! An effective technique to remove the oily residue is with vinegar or glass cleaners. Murphy’s Oil Soap can penetrate into the surface of the wood. When it is time to get your hardwood floors refinished, they will have to be sanded down past the oil build-up in order for the new finish to adhere. Murphy’s Oil Soap can react with the finish softening it and making it dull. This is obviously irreversible.
If you are smart, please do not listen to the seemingly compelling advertisements about Murphy’s Oil Soap. Using oil soap can be as serious as loosing your wood floor warranty!