What colour of Floor cleaning pad do I need?

Choosing the right colour of floor cleaning pad is important, get it wrong and you could potentially remove the finish from your flooring or even damage it.

The pads are graded by colour from black through to white, with each colour being gentler than the last.

The type of pad that you need will depend on the type of flooring that you have and your cleaning routine. The below table should be used only as a guide to choosing the correct type of floor pad.

• White This pad is very fine and designed for dry polishing of floors or light water spray polishing for a super high gloss.
• Tan - This pad is used for high speed polishing. (This should not be confused with Brown pads which are far coarser)
• Red – This floor pad is slightly coarser than the white pad and designed for cleaning, and spray buffing, will remove scuff marks due to its slightly coarser finish.
• Blue - This moderate floor pad is ideal for scrubbing floors and heavy-duty spray cleaning applications, its course texture will remove top layers of finish that may be soiled.
• Green - This pad is getting fairly course, ideal for heavy duty scrubbing and light stripping work.
• Black  - Heavy duty coarse stripping pad, this is for wet striping of floors removing old finishes. It is important to keep this pad on the move as its course nature will quickly damage floors if left in one spot for too long.

What size of floor cleaning pad do I need?

You will need to measure the deck of your machine to find out what size of floor cleaning pad you need. You simply need to measure across your drive board as per the below image.

The pad fitted to the drive board should be approximately 1” (25mm) larger in size than the drive board itself. We have included a table below showing the common sizes of pad in inches and mm. 

Inches (Imperial) | mm (Metric)

• 10" - 254mm
• 13" - 330mm
• 14" - 355mm
• 15" - 380mm
• 16" - 405mm
• 17" - 431mm
• 20" - 510mm