How often should you get commercial office cleaning?

"How often do we actually need cleaners?" is one of the first questions most office managers ask when they're setting up a contract for the first time, or reviewing one that no longer feels right. There's no single correct answer, but there is a reasonably reliable way to work it out: start from headcount and foot traffic, then adjust for site type.

Start with headcount and foot traffic, not habit

The most common mistake is copying whatever frequency a previous office used, without checking whether it still fits. A 15-person professional office with a steady 9-to-5 pattern has very different cleaning needs to a 15-person office with a constant stream of client visitors, or a shared coworking floor with 40 people rotating through hot desks. Headcount matters, but foot traffic — staff plus visitors plus anyone using kitchens, bathrooms, and meeting rooms — is usually the better predictor of how quickly a space actually gets dirty.

Realistic starting points

As a general guide for standard commercial offices in the Illawarra:

• Daily cleaning suits larger offices (25+ people), client-facing sites, medical-adjacent offices, or any site with shared kitchens and multiple bathrooms in regular use.
• 2–3 times per week is a common middle ground for mid-sized offices (10–25 people) with moderate visitor traffic.
• Weekly cleaning can work for smaller teams (under 10 people) with low visitor traffic and good day-to-day tidiness habits, though bathrooms and kitchens are usually the limiting factor even at this size.

These are starting points, not rules. A five-person office next to a busy retail strip with constant walk-ins will need more attention than a fifteen-person back-office team that rarely sees visitors.

What actually drives frequency up

A few specific factors tend to push a site toward more frequent cleaning regardless of headcount:

• Shared bathrooms used by staff and visitors
• An open kitchen or breakout area used for lunch
• Carpet or soft flooring in high-traffic zones
• Client meetings held on-site regularly
• Multi-tenant buildings where common areas are also part of the scope

Why the wrong frequency shows up fast

Get the frequency wrong in either direction and it becomes obvious quickly. Too infrequent, and bins overflow, bathrooms fall behind, and the office starts to look neglected to clients and staff. Too frequent, and you're paying for visits that don't add much beyond what the previous clean already covered — a cost that adds up over a year without anyone questioning it. The right frequency is the lowest one that keeps the site consistently presentable between visits, not the highest one you can afford.

It's fine to start conservative and adjust

If you're not sure, it's reasonable to start with a slightly higher frequency for the first month, see how the site holds up between cleans, and scale back if it's clearly more than needed. Most cleaning providers, Clean Spaces included, would rather adjust a schedule after seeing the real pattern of use than lock in a frequency from a single walkthrough.