How do you look after marble and zellige day to day in Marrakech?

Marble, travertine, limestone and the lime grout of a zellige floor are all made of calcium carbonate. An acid dissolves it. That is not wear, it is a chemical reaction, and it is immediate.

The scale that matters fits in four lines:

• pH below 6 — forbidden. Vinegar, lemon juice, hydrochloric acid, descaler, limescale remover, toilet cleaner, most "special shower" products. They leave a dull, irreversible haze that only sanding can undo.
• pH 7 to 8 — the working zone. Neutral products, mild soaps, clean water. This is what belongs in everyday use.
• pH 9 to 11 — occasional use, always rinsed. Alkaline detergents, used on greasy soiling, with an immediate clean-water rinse.
• pH above 12 — professional use only. Strippers, reserved for a full restoration with rinsing and neutralising.

A thirty-second test exists: put a drop of the suspect product on an offcut tile or in a hidden corner. If it foams, fizzes or bleaches, the product is attacking the calcite. Never put it back on the floor.

The routine that keeps a crystallised marble floor looking its best, without taking any longer than caring for an ordinary tiled floor.

Every day or every other day: dry dusting. A dry microfibre mop, or a vacuum cleaner with the brush head raised. This one step alone removes sand before it gets crushed underfoot.

Once or twice a week: wet washing.

• Neutral product, dosed at roughly 1% — one 20 ml cap in 2 litres of water. Overdosing is the most common cause of a floor that stays tacky and resoils quickly.
• A two-compartment bucket: one for the clean solution, one for the wrung-out water. A single bucket puts the sand straight back into circulation.
• Microfibre mop only, never an abrasive pad, and never steel wool outside a professional intervention.
• Wrung out, not dripping. A floor left wet dries to a limescale deposit: Marrakech water is hard.
• Immediate drying of any patch that stays damp, with a dry mop.

Never: spreading black soap as a finish. It gives an instant shine and leaves a greasy film that holds onto dust from the following day. That is make-up, not care.

Zellige is glazed terracotta: the face is vitrified, the edges are not. The tile therefore absorbs through its sides, through the grout. Whatever gets put on it ends up in the material.

The routine, on floors and walls alike:

• Warm clean water for everyday washing. A heavily diluted neutral product is enough on greasy soiling, followed by a rinse.
• A soft-bristled brush on the grout lines, following the direction they were laid, never a hard brush or a scouring pad — the glaze is thin and scratches permanently.
• Rinse for longer than you wash. Soap that is not properly rinsed settles into the grout and resurfaces as a haze a few days later.
• Drying with a microfibre cloth: it is standing water that degrades a lime grout, not foot traffic.

On a bathroom wall, limescale is the real issue. It is not treated with a limescale remover: the fix is systematic drying after every use, with a squeegee then a microfibre cloth. The full protocol for an established deposit is on treating traditional floors and surfaces.

This is the local factor, and it explains why most floors dull within a year.

Sand is essentially quartz, considerably harder than the calcite in marble. Every grain crushed underfoot acts as an abrasive tool. It does not cause one visible scratch but thousands of micro-scratches that scatter light: the floor does not scratch, it goes matte.

The three defences, in order of real effectiveness:

1. An entrance mat at every doorway, long enough for at least three strides — roughly 1.2 to 1.5 metres. A 40 cm doormat is decorative: it only catches a fraction of the sand. The mat needs shaking out or vacuuming at least once a week, or it becomes a reservoir.
2. Dry dusting before any wet wash. Washing a sandy floor is the same as rubbing it with an abrasive paste.
3. Felt pads under every piece of furniture, chairs included, and no hard castors on a polished stone floor.

The detail of the moves that protect a polished surface is set out in our article on cleaning marble without scratching it.

A short list, tested on real floors, that holds for marble and zellige alike.

• Limescale remover and descaler — acids. The number-one cause of dull haze on a bathroom marble.
• White vinegar — a diluted acid, not a mild product. It attacks calcium carbonate exactly like the others.
• Lemon juice — same family, immediate effect on a marble worktop.
• Bleach — fades grout, dulls glaze over time, and does nothing useful on mineral soiling.
• Scouring cream and abrasive powder — scratch a polished surface in a single pass.
• Scouring pad, green pad, steel wool — the same effect, faster still.
• Scented all-purpose cleaner left unrinsed — leaves a film that holds dust and dulls a floor within weeks.
• Black soap used unrinsed as a finish — greasy film, marks by the next day.

Black soap has one legitimate use, and one only: saturating a tadelakt (a burnished lime-plaster wall finish), as part of a professional protocol with a set penetration time and a stone-burnishing pass. Not as a daily floor cleaner.

What is down to you, and what calls for an intervention.

• Daily — dry dusting of traffic areas, drying wet surfaces in bathrooms and kitchens.
• Weekly — washing with clean water or a neutral product dosed at 1%, vacuuming or shaking out entrance mats.
• Monthly — checking traffic areas in raking light: that is where dulling shows first. Checking furniture pads.
• Twice a year — a thorough clean of the grout with a soft brush, degreasing thresholds and skirtings.
• As traffic dictates — re-polishing by a stone specialist. In a family home in a traffic zone, the timing is judged by condition, not by the calendar: once the shine turns uneven between the centre of the room and its edges, it is time. The difference between the three possible techniques is set out in our article on honing, crystallisation or burnishing, bearing in mind that not every floor can be crystallised.

One thing not to confuse with routine care: a greasy stain is not washed away, it is drawn out — the method is in our article on removing an oil stain from marble. For a clean after building work, describe the surface and the type of stone; the price list is on post-construction prices.