Commercial Strip & Wax Floor Service in Miami
When a VCT floor has gone yellow at the edges, dark in the lanes, and dull everywhere, no amount of buffing brings it back — the finish itself is spent. The fix is the full reset: commercial floor stripping and waxing.
Purity Luster strips the old finish completely, neutralizes the floor, and lays fresh coats of commercial-grade finish evenly wall to wall — the treatment that makes ten-year-old tile read newly installed.
What's included
Every old coat off, not the top two — residue left behind is what makes a new finish fail.
Details Rinse and neutralisationThe step most often skipped, and the reason a fresh floor can haze within a week.
Details Fresh coats, applied evenlyMultiple thin coats with real dry time between them, edges cut in by hand.
Details Burnish to final glossThe finish is hardened and brought to its final sheen once it has cured.
Details A maintenance cycle afterScrub-and-recoat intervals that stretch the years between full strips.
Details Entry matting to protect itGrit stopped at the door is finish you do not pay to replace.
DetailsWhy it matters
Yellowing, lane wear, and buildup — gone with the old finish.
Wall-to-wall uniformity, including the edges rushed crews skip.
Fresh finish is what future burnishing keeps beautiful.
- Complete removal of old finish and buildup
- Floor neutralization and prep
- Multiple even coats of commercial finish
- Edges, corners, and baseboard lines detailed
- Overnight scheduling with full cure time
What a proper strip and wax actually involves
It is one job with seven steps, and the ones that get skipped are always the invisible ones. A floor that hazes, peels or yellows within a month almost never failed at the coating stage — it failed at the rinse.
The full sequence, and what goes wrong when a step is cut to save an hour.
| Step | What happens | What skipping it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Protect and prep | Furniture moved, edges and bases masked | Stripper splash on baseboards and door frames |
| Apply stripper, let it dwell | Solution softens every existing coat | Old finish left in place under the new coats |
| Agitate and remove | Machine scrub, then wet-vacuum the slurry | Slurry dries back onto the tile as a film |
| Rinse and neutralise | Residual alkalinity removed from the tile | The single biggest cause of hazing and adhesion failure |
| Dry fully | The floor must be genuinely dry, not nearly | Milky finish and trapped moisture |
| Build coats | Multiple thin coats, real dry time between | Thick coats that stay soft and mark under traffic |
| Cure, then burnish | Finish hardens before the first gloss pass | Burnishing green finish drags and scars it |
Finish choice is a safety decision, not only an appearance one. Slip resistance for hard flooring is measured under ANSI A326.3, which since its 2021 revision classifies products by intended use rather than a single pass/fail figure — the older version used a flat 0.42 wet DCOF minimum for level interior floors walked on when wet. The standard also notes that contaminants such as water, soap, oil or grease change the measured value, which is exactly why the finish and the cleaning chemistry have to be chosen together.
TCNA — dynamic coefficient of friction FAQHow often a floor really needs stripping
Less often than most buildings do it — if the maintenance in between is right. A full strip removes finish down to bare tile, and each one is a small subtraction from the tile's life. The goal of a good programme is to make strips rare.
In practice that means scrub and recoat as the routine intervention, once or twice a year depending on traffic, with a full strip only when the finish is discoloured, holding embedded soil, or built up to the point of edge flaking. A well-maintained VCT floor can go several years between strips. A neglected one needs stripping annually, which costs more over five years than the maintenance would have.
Commercial cleaning is quoted on labour, not on floor area alone — and a strip-and-wax is labour almost end to end, which is why the same floor can be quoted at very different numbers.
ISSA — commercial cleaning ratesDowntime, scheduling and what it costs
Most commercial strip-and-wax work runs overnight, and the floor is walkable before opening. What it cannot be is fully cured — finish needs time and traffic to reach its final hardness, so we ask that heavy carts and furniture wait a further day where possible.
On price, the honest variables are the number of existing coats, how much furniture has to move, square footage against edge and corner detail, and whether the work fits one shift or several. A floor with fifteen years of build-up is a different job from one stripped two years ago, even at identical square footage. Any bidder who quotes without seeing the floor is guessing at the first variable, which is the one that matters most.
Strip & wax service across Miami-Dade & Broward
We refinish VCT and vinyl throughout South Florida — offices and clinics in Miami and Coral Gables, schools and warehouses in Hialeah, corporate parks in Doral, plus Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, Miramar and Miami Lakes.
Common questions
How often does a commercial floor need strip and wax?
Once or twice a year for most traffic levels — less if burnishing maintenance is keeping the finish healthy between resets. Your care plan sets the honest cadence.
How long is the floor out of service?
Typically overnight to a weekend depending on area size — stripping, coats, and cure time all scheduled around your hours so open-for-business is never the casualty.
How much does strip and wax cost per square foot?
By the square foot, and the two things that move it are how many coats of old finish have to come off and how much furniture has to be moved and put back. An open retail floor and a cubicle-dense office of the same size are not the same job.
How many coats of finish should a commercial floor get?
Typically four to six on bare tile — the base coats sealed thin, the top coats fuller — though the finish manufacturer's own instructions govern. Fewer coats is the most common corner cut, and you see it within months when the floor starts wearing through in the traffic lanes.
Can you strip and wax LVT?
Usually not, and doing it can void the manufacturer's warranty. Luxury vinyl comes with a factory wear layer that is not designed to be coated. If someone has already waxed it, that is a different conversation — come and look before anyone strips anything.
Do you have to strip every time, or can you scrub and recoat?
Scrub and recoat wherever the base coats are still sound — it is faster, cheaper and takes the floor out of service for less time. A full strip is for finish that has yellowed, is flaking, or is contaminated all the way down. Using a strip when a recoat would do is how a floor gets thinned out over the years.
Related reading: strip and wax vs. buff and burnish · what commercial cleaning costs in Miami · what to expect from a walkthrough
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