Gloss on polished concrete is a surface condition, not a coating. Products that build a film restore shine for a week and then trap dirt, haze the surface and cost more to strip than they saved. The products that work are the ones that clean without leaving anything behind.

What actually preserves gloss

Product	Job	Watch out for
pH-neutral cleaner (7-8)	Daily and periodic cleaning	Too strong an alkaline strips guard
High-pH degreaser, diluted	Kitchen and shop floors, occasional	Weekly use dulls the finish
Concrete guard / densifier top-up	Re-seal gloss every 12-24 months	Applying over dirt locks it in
Burnishing pad (white or beige)	Mechanical gloss refresh	Too aggressive a pad cuts the cream
Microfibre flat mop	Dust and film removal	Dirty water redeposits soil

Cleaners: what to specify

Use a neutral cleaner at 1:64 to 1:128 for daily work, applied with a microfibre flat mop and a two-bucket setup. Avoid acidic cleaners entirely; they etch the cream layer and the dull spot never buffs out. Avoid "shine" additives, waxes and acrylic floor finishes. They sit on top of the polish, yellow under UV and require stripping with a product aggressive enough to damage the densified layer.

Mechanical gloss without chemistry

Most dull commercial floors do not need a new chemical, they need a burnish. A 500-800 rpm burnisher with a white or beige pad, run dry, raises gloss several points in one pass without adding a film. Frequency matters more than product choice: high-traffic retail at 2-3 times per week, offices once a week, residential monthly.

Guard and densifier top-up

Where a guard was used, reapply every 12-24 months after a deep clean, at the manufacturer's coverage rate. Do not top-up over a dirty floor: the guard seals soil into the pores and the floor turns grey within weeks. If gloss readings have dropped more than 10 units, a two-step refinish is usually better value than another guard coat.

Common mistakes

• Mop water changed once a shift: soil redeposits across the whole floor.
• Steam mops on a guard: the heat lifts the film unevenly.
• Bleach or citrus degreaser as a daily cleaner: both dull the surface over months.
• Auto-scrubber brushes instead of soft pads on a finished floor.

Build a maintenance kit by floor type

One cleaner for every floor is how gloss dies quietly. A retail floor with trolley traffic, a restaurant kitchen with fat loading and an office with only foot traffic need different chemistry, different pads and different frequencies, and the specification should say so in one page the cleaner can actually follow.

Floor type	Daily cleaner	Pad	Gloss cycle	Guard interval
Retail, trolleys and carts	Neutral 1:64	White or beige	Burnish 2-3 times a week	12 months
Restaurant kitchen and front	Neutral daily, alkaline degreaser weekly	Red for degrease, white for finish	Burnish weekly	9-12 months
Office and showroom	Neutral 1:128	White	Burnish weekly	18-24 months
Warehouse and workshop	Neutral plus occasional degreaser	Beige, scrubber with soft pads	Burnish monthly	12 months
Residential	Neutral 1:128	Microfibre only	Burnish monthly or as needed	24 months

Write the kit as a shopping list with product names, dilution rates and pad colours, not as generic advice. A cleaner handed "use a neutral cleaner" will buy whatever is on the shelf at the lowest price, and half of those are alkaline enough to strip a guard in a month.

Dilution math and dosing discipline

Dilution is the single most common place where a good product becomes a bad one. A 1:64 mix is roughly 15 ml per litre; a 1:128 mix is roughly 8 ml. Nobody measures that by eye, so put a graduated dispenser on the wall and calibrate it once per quarter.

• Fill the bucket with water first, then add concentrate. Adding water to concentrate foams and gives an unpredictable strength.
• Use two buckets or a dual-compartment trolley: one for solution, one for rinse water, and change both when the rinse water turns grey.
• Never top up a bucket with more concentrate to "make it work better". Doubling the dose does not double the cleaning, it doubles the residue.
• Check the dispenser against a measuring jug once a quarter. Edjectors drift, and a drifted eductor silently over-doses every floor in the building.
• Keep a mop-head rotation: microfibre heads go through the laundry, not just the rinse bucket, and flat mops are replaced when the fringe stops laying flat.

The visible test is simple: after cleaning, wipe a dry white pad across a metre of floor. If it comes up with a film, the dose or the rinse is wrong, and that film is what turns grey and dull over the following weeks.

When chemistry stops working

There is a point where no product brings the gloss back, and recognising it saves a customer a year of buying chemicals that do nothing. Three signals mark that point:

• Gloss readings have dropped more than 10 units from handover and a burnish does not recover them within 24 hours.
• The floor shows a uniform grey cast that wipes off and returns within days, which means the pore structure is loaded with residue rather than the surface being dull.
• Wear lanes are visible as a colour difference, not just a sheen difference, which means the cream layer is gone in the traffic path.

At that point the honest answer is a two-step refinish, not another drum of guard. Selling chemistry against worn-through cream is how a maintenance programme loses credibility, and the customer works it out within two invoices.

Write the maintenance spec into the handover document with dilution rates, pad colours and frequencies. The floor's gloss after three years is decided by that document far more than by the polishing step sequence.