Every week potential clients ask us this question: “Can you clean away the stains, water marks, water spots or rings on my marble vanity, marble floor or granite countertop?”
The answer, in almost every case, is “Yes, we can get the marble stains out and it can look beautiful again!”
For example, the photos above was a brown vanity top in Wellesley with ‘water rings’. They can’t be cleaned away because they are not soil sitting on top of the stone. So removing the stains is not usually a matter of just ‘cleaning’. In most situations, what looks exactly like a hard water spot or a stain on the marble is not a true stain that you can just scrub away. Instead, it is more often an etch caused by acidic chemicals. To add insult to injury, many times the acid was inside a liquid or spray cleaning chemical used to keep the marble clean. Ouch! Or as Architectural Digest put it, “For marble, acid is kryptonite“.
How to Remove Marble Stains
The first step is to identify what type of stain we are dealing with. To be technical, most people misuse the word ‘stain’. A true stain is anything that added color to the stone that wasn’t there before. Think of grape juice sitting on a countertop and leaving a purple blotch on previously pristine white stone. That’s a true marble stain. These are possible to hone out or clean out, but in the long run they may require a poultice paste to gradually pull the stain color up through wicking action. This process doesn’t always work, so yes, in some cases, a stain is permanent and we can’t get it out and neither can anyone else. In showers where there is hard water, there can also be hard water deposits that aren’t actually added color, but they are on the surface of the stone and can be removed.
But mostly what looks to people like a stain is actually an etch mark from acidic food or makeup or cleaning chemicals. This shower below was damaged by acid based cleaning chemicals.
The process that works is to hone down the marble or granite by using diamond abrasive pads. Then we go over the area with a marble polish that builds back the shine. If there is any soil on the surface, this also removes it and achieves cleaning at the same time.
If you have a ‘water mark’, a ‘water ring’ or an etch or ‘hard water stain’ on your marble or granite, whether it be a shower wall, shower floor, marble floor, granite countertop, or marble vanity, give us a call at 617-221-4002 or fill out the form at the end of this page and we’ll get your stone back into shape!
Our contact information:
Act One – Marble and Tile
15 Main Street # 138
Watertown MA 02472-4403
617-221-4002 Text or Call
