Operations

How often does your site actually need cleaning?

Frequency is set by occupancy and use, not by floor area. A 400m² office with 40 staff needs five nights a week; the same floor plate with 12 staff needs three. Amenities, kitchens, bins and high-touch surfaces are cleaned every day a site is occupied, always. Everything else — under-desk vacuuming, dusting, glass, meeting room resets — is where frequency can safely come down, and where most sites are over-serviced.

Written by NCA Operations Team

Reviewed 8 August 2026

Reading time 8 min read

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The rule underneath every table below

Cleaning frequency tracks how often a surface is touched, not how large it is. That sounds obvious and is almost universally ignored when quotes are written per square metre.

Practically, it splits every building into two categories. Wet and high-touch areas — amenities, kitchens, bins, door hardware, lift buttons, handrails — are cleaned every day the site is occupied, in every building type, without exception. Dry, low-touch areas — floors away from traffic paths, dusting, glass, storage — scale with occupancy and can flex.

Most sites carrying a frequency they cannot afford are over-servicing the second category and under-servicing the first. Reversing that usually costs nothing and fixes the complaints.

Offices

Staff headcount, not floor area, sets the baseline. The thresholds below hold well across South East Queensland.

40+ staff 5 nights/week general clean · amenities and kitchen daily · under-desk vacuum 2×/week · full internal glass quarterly · carpet extraction 2×/year · hard floor scrub and buff quarterly

20–40 staff 5 nights/week general clean · amenities and kitchen daily · under-desk vacuum weekly · dusting 3×/week · carpet extraction 2×/year

10–20 staff 3 nights/week general clean · kitchen and amenity deep clean weekly · bins on non-service days by staff or a short day visit · carpet extraction annually

Under 10 staff 2 nights/week · weekly amenity deep clean · kitchen wiped on both service days · carpet extraction annually

Never reduce Amenities, kitchen, bins, and high-touch surfaces — door hardware, lift buttons, shared keyboards, printer touchpads.

Retail and shopping centres

Retail is the one building type where cleaning happens during trade as well as after it, because presentation is part of the product.

Trading hours Day-porter cover for entries, glass, spills, food court tables and amenity checks — hourly during peak trade for centres, twice daily for single tenancies.

After close Full floor clean, back-of-house, loading dock, bin room, amenity deep clean. Nightly, 7 days for centres.

Weekly Escalator and travelator comb cleaning, entry mat wash, external footpath sweep, signage and light diffuser wipe-down.

Periodic Hard floor scrub and buff monthly · external glass monthly to quarterly by exposure · pressure wash entries and docks quarterly · full floor strip and seal annually.

Medical, dental and allied health

Frequency here is not a budget decision. Clinical areas are cleaned to protocol, documented, and audited — and the documentation matters as much as the cleaning.

Clinical rooms After every session, minimum daily. Treatment surfaces, chairs, hardware and touchpoints with TGA-listed disinfectant and colour-coded equipment separated from non-clinical areas.

Waiting rooms Daily, with high-touch surfaces — chairs, reception counter, door hardware, EFTPOS terminals, toys where present — sanitised daily and again during flu season peaks.

Amenities Daily minimum; twice daily in high-throughput practices. Clinical waste streams handled and documented separately from general waste.

Periodic Full deep clean quarterly · carpet extraction 2×/year · high dusting and vents 2×/year · floor strip and seal annually.

Schools, campuses and childcare

Early-learning sites carry the heaviest infection-control load of any commercial building type. Every cleaner on an education or early-learning site must hold a current Queensland Blue Card.

Childcare, daily All rooms, high-touch surfaces, toys, sleep areas, nappy change areas and amenities sanitised daily with TGA-listed product.

Childcare, weekly Documented deep clean — mats, soft furnishings, storage, skirtings and shelving. Records kept for regulatory inspection.

Childcare, outbreak Twice daily during gastro or hand-foot-and-mouth outbreaks, with fogging of affected rooms.

Schools, term time Classrooms and amenities daily · corridors and common areas daily · staff rooms daily · gym and hall floors daily during use.

Schools, holidays Full deep clean of classrooms, carpet extraction, floor strip and seal, high dusting and window cleaning — booked into the annual program against term dates.

Warehouses, industrial and logistics

Here the pattern inverts: floors are the machinery problem and amenities are the frequency problem.

Amenities and crib rooms Per shift changeover on multi-shift sites, not once nightly. A three-shift facility wears its amenities three times as fast as a nine-to-five office.

Warehouse floors Ride-on scrub 2–5×/week by traffic volume, sized to the slab and racking layout. Mopping a distribution centre slab does not work at any frequency.

Offices within the facility Treat as a standalone office and apply the headcount thresholds above.

Periodic High-level dusting of racking and beams 2×/year · dock and apron pressure wash quarterly · line-marking refresh annually.

Gyms, studios and hospitality

Both are high-touch, high-moisture environments where under-cleaning shows within a single day.

Gyms, daily All equipment touchpoints, mats, free weights, change rooms, showers and amenities. Twice daily where the site runs 24 hours.

Gyms, weekly Deep clean of change rooms and showers with descaling and grout work; mould inspection in wet areas.

Hospitality, daily Front of house before service, kitchen sanitation after each service, amenities checked hourly during trade.

Hospitality, periodic Kitchen degrease and canopy clean quarterly (or per your insurer's requirement) · floor deep clean and grout monthly · external glass monthly.

Where to cut when the budget will not stretch

If the frequency has to come down, take it from the list on the left, never the list on the right. The saving is real and the difference is close to invisible.

Safe to reduce Under-desk vacuuming (daily to 2×/week) · dusting of reachable surfaces (daily to 3×/week) · meeting room resets in rooms used occasionally · full internal glass (quarterly to 2×/year) · low-traffic floor areas

Never reduce Amenities · kitchens · bins and waste removal · high-touch surfaces · clinical and food-handling areas · anything the public sees first

Better than reducing Move periodic work into a maintenance program. Bundling carpet, glass, floors and deep cleans into one annual calendar typically saves 10 to 20 percent against calling each one in separately.

The short version

Frequency follows occupancy and touch, not floor area. Headcount sets an office baseline far better than square metres do.

Amenities, kitchens, bins and high-touch surfaces are daily in every building type. That line does not move.

Most over-servicing hides in under-desk vacuuming, dusting and glass — cut there and nobody notices.

Before cutting frequency, bundle periodic work into a maintenance program: usually 10–20% cheaper for the same tasks.

Questions

Frequency, answered.

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How often should an office be cleaned?

Offices above roughly 20 staff need five nights a week, because kitchens and amenities can't hold a day. Below 20 staff, three nights a week with a weekly amenity deep clean works and cuts about 30 percent off the monthly cost. Below 10 staff, twice weekly is usually enough provided bins and kitchen are handled in between.

How often should office carpets be cleaned?

Hot-water extraction twice a year for a general office, quarterly for reception and high-traffic entry paths, and annually for low-traffic areas such as private offices and boardrooms. Extending past twelve months lets soil bed into the pile permanently — extraction then restores appearance but not the fibre, and the carpet's replacement date moves years closer.

How often should commercial amenities be cleaned?

Every day the site is occupied, without exception, plus a quarterly deep clean with descaling and grout work. Amenities are the one area where reducing frequency is a false economy: they're the first thing staff and visitors judge a building by, and where a complaint costs more than the saving.

Where can you safely reduce cleaning frequency to save money?

Vacuuming under desks, dusting of reachable surfaces, meeting room resets in rooms used a few times a week, and full internal glass. These can move from daily to two or three times weekly with almost no visible difference. Never reduce amenities, kitchens, bins or high-touch surfaces — those show within a day.

How often should a childcare centre be cleaned?

Daily as a minimum, with high-touch surfaces, toys and nappy change areas sanitised daily and a documented weekly deep clean. Early-learning sites carry the heaviest infection-control load of any commercial building type, and cleaners must hold a Queensland Blue Card. During a gastro or hand-foot-and-mouth outbreak, frequency moves to twice daily with TGA-listed disinfectant.

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