Soap or oil for decking—what should you choose?
Sara IdenforsIf you want decking with a light, warm gray finish and an environmentally friendly treatment, a superfat soap is an excellent choice. The soap gently cleans and cares for the wood, and you avoid the darker shades that oil often produces over time.
Oil and soap have different properties, and the choice depends on the final result you want. Oiled decking often darkens over the years, while decking treated with a superfat soap such as Västerbottenssåpa retains its light, natural tone for longer.
If you want decking with a light, warm gray finish and an environmentally friendly treatment, a superfat soap is an excellent choice. The soap gently cleans and cares for the wood, and you avoid the darker shades that oil often produces over time.
Here, we have oiled half of the decking and treated the other half with soap to show the difference.
A major advantage of using soap is that the surface is easy to keep clean: pollen, dust, and other debris do not stick to the decking but come off easily. You can keep the decking clean with a simple broom after scrubbing it with soap.
Scrub with warm water and a superfat soap such as Västerbottenssåpa. Once you have scrubbed away all the dirt, growth, algae, lichen, and so on, scrub again with cold water and soap.
The more often you scrub, the more the wood becomes saturated with the excess fat in the soap, giving you that traditional scrubbed-floor feel. This method of treating wooden floors has worked well for several hundred years. Another advantage is that it removes organic growth, leaving the decking clean and fresh.
Above: Close-up of soap-treated decking.
Above: Close-up of the same decking (the other half), which was not scrubbed with soap but only oiled.
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Questions and answers
1. Does soap make the decking shiny?
No, soap always produces a matte finish.
Scrubbed floors are a well-known concept, and this method has been used for several hundred years.
3. Which is easier to keep clean, soap-treated or oiled decking?
Soap-treated decking is easier to keep clean.