commercial
Office cleaning
Office cleaning costs £17 to £25 an hour on a contract, and a small office cleaned two hours a day, five days a week, runs roughly £700 to £1,100 a month. It is bought on a specification rather than on a rate: what the price actually turns on is which tasks are daily, which are weekly, and who supplies the hand towels.
What this covers
What it costs. Office cleaning costs £17 to £25 an hour on a contract and £24 to £36 ad hoc. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Daily or several-times-weekly cleaning outside working hours
- Desks, meeting rooms, kitchens and washrooms
- Vacuuming, hard floor maintenance and periodic machine scrubbing
- Consumables: hand towels, soap, bin liners and washroom supplies
- Periodic deep work: carpets, windows and high level dusting
What is involved
The specification is the contract. Daily, weekly and monthly tasks should be listed separately, because what goes wrong is nearly always the periodic ones: high level dusting, under the desks, behind the fridge, the washroom grouting. Anything not on the list is not happening, whatever anybody intended when they agreed it.
Desks are the part worth being explicit about. Most office contracts clear and wipe only what is visible, and do not move papers, keyboards or personal items. A specification that says "desks cleaned" means something different to the cleaner and to the person whose desk it is, and clear-desk expectations are better set with the staff than with the contractor.
Washrooms drive the price more than floor area does. They are the slowest rooms, the most complained about and the ones consumables are consumed in, so the number of them, and how often they are done, moves a quote further than a few hundred square feet either way.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask for a written specification before any price, and compare specifications rather than monthly figures.
Ask who supplies hand towels, soap and bin liners, and whether it is included or billed on. For a small office that is £40 to £90 a month, which is enough to make two quotes look different when they are not.
Ask what happens when the regular cleaner is off, and who holds the keys or the alarm code. Those are the two things you will actually have to deal with.
Common questions
How is office cleaning priced?
Per visit, worked out from floor area, the number of washrooms and the frequency, then expressed monthly. Hourly pricing is more common for very small offices and for ad hoc work.
Will they clean our desks?
Whatever the specification says, and it usually means visible surfaces rather than moving papers and keyboards. Worth agreeing a clear-desk expectation with staff rather than with the contractor.