The rule of thumb: an office under about 150 square metres usually suits weekly or fortnightly office cleaning. From 150 to 500 square metres it’s typically three to five visits a week, and daily or near daily is for sites of 500 square metres and up. More people, visitors, food and busy kitchens and bathrooms push you up a step.
This site has write-ups of two regular cleaning programs, and neither one fits the title. Pulp Digital’s studio in Richmond gets us once a fortnight. The floors at Siora Tiramisu in Hawthorn East get us twice a week.
I’d rather explain why those two landed where they did than hand you a comparison table, because the same handful of things will settle it for your office.
Once a fortnight: a studio in Richmond
Pulp Digital is a growth marketing agency. The studio has long white workbenches, polished concrete and carpet, a kitchen, and bathrooms with a shower. It’s desk work in a place that’s tidy by nature, so two weeks between visits is enough.
Always outside business hours. Each visit is the full round: desks with the keyboards moved, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and every floor vacuumed, stairs included. See the whole routine.
A fortnightly program only works if every visit is a complete one. Nothing gets left for next time, because next time is two weeks away.
Twice a week: a white floor under a food kitchen
Siora Tiramisu is a dessert bar with its production kitchen behind it, all on white commercial flooring. White shows every spill and sticky patch, and a working kitchen makes plenty of both. A fortnight between cleans wouldn’t work there.
The floors get a deep clean every Tuesday night and Saturday morning, timed around trading and prep. Vacuum first, food-safe products on the spills, then a full mop and scrub. See the before and afters.
The bathrooms there are sanitised weekly, on a different cycle to the floors. You don’t have to clean a whole building at one rate. Decide it room by room.
The four things that decide it
People come first. Bins, bathrooms and the kitchen get dirty at the rate they’re used, so count who is in on a normal day. If half the team works from home on Mondays and Fridays, an office of twenty is an office of ten on those days.
Kitchens and bathrooms are the rooms that go off between visits. A desk left for a fortnight is dusty. A busy bathroom left for a fortnight is a complaint.
Visitors raise the bar. A studio that clients rarely see can look lived in by the end of the week. A reception or a waiting room is judged by strangers every day, and they don’t know the cleaner is due on Friday. Busy shared spaces like tutoring centres, gyms and meeting rooms need extra attention on door handles, desks and shared equipment.
Food shortens everything. Anywhere it’s prepared or sold, floors and benches can’t wait a week. That’s why Siora sees us four times as often as Pulp does.
If the answer is daily
Daily office cleaning is something we can do, at whatever hour suits you. What a small team can’t do is a very large site that needs cleaners on it several shifts a day. If that’s you, I’ll tell you when you ring, before either of us spends time on a quote.
Start lower than you think you need
My advice is to begin at the lower frequency and look hard at the place the day before we’re due. If the bins are full and somebody has already mentioned the bathroom, go up a step. If it still looks fine, you’ve got it right.
There’s no lock-in contract. Changing the frequency takes one phone call and reasonable notice.
More visits means a bigger monthly bill and a smaller price per visit, because a place that never slides is quicker to reset. Regular cleans start from $99 a visit, and a small office is roughly $600 to $700 a month on a weekly program. The pricing guide has the ranges for larger spaces, and I’ve written separately about scheduling a clean so it costs less.
Before you pick a frequency
How often should a small office be cleaned?
Under about 150 square metres, weekly or fortnightly. Go weekly if the kitchen and bathrooms are busy or clients come in. Fortnightly suits desk work where the team keeps the kitchen in order between visits.
How often should an office with a hybrid team be cleaned?
Book the clean for straight after your busiest stretch. If the office fills up Tuesday to Thursday, one clean on Thursday night does more than a fixed Monday visit to rooms nobody has used since.
What should the team do between cleans?
Run the dishwasher, wipe the kitchen bench after lunch, and take out any bin with food in it before the weekend. Leave the floors, the bathrooms and the dusting to us. The full split, day by day and visit by visit, is in our office cleaning checklist.
Tell me the headcount on a busy day, what kitchens and bathrooms you’ve got, and whether customers come through. I’ll suggest a frequency and quote it. My number is 0409 385 707, or use the form. Either way you get an answer the same day.