The honest answer is: it depends. What's right for one site is overkill for the next, or nowhere near enough. But after enough walkthroughs you start to see the patterns, and a few of them hold up just about everywhere.
Here's how I'd think it through for your office.
Daily, for high-traffic, customer-facing, food-prep
Cafes, gyms, medical clinics, shops with bathrooms open to the public. Anywhere a customer touches a surface in the morning that someone else touched the night before. If the public sees it daily, it needs resetting daily.
Daily cleans are short and tight. Bathrooms reset, high-touch surfaces wiped down, floors mopped, bins out. The deeper work, skirting boards, blinds, behind the appliances, sits on top of that as a weekly or fortnightly layer.
Twice-weekly, for medium offices with consistent foot traffic
Offices with around 20 staff, regular client visits, shared kitchens and bathrooms taking heavy use through the week. By Wednesday a once-a-week clean isn't keeping up, so a Monday and Thursday rotation keeps on top of it.
Co-working and shared spaces ask for this one the most. Foot traffic varies a lot, and you can't have shared bathrooms looking tired by day three.
Weekly, the default for most professional offices
5 to 20 staff, low-to-medium client traffic, the usual mix of desks, kitchen and bathrooms. Weekly is almost always the answer. It's where most of our office clients sit.
A weekly covers the lot: every desk, every bathroom, a full kitchen reset, vacuum and mop, glass and the high-touch surfaces. Most pick a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning. One sets you up for the weekend, the other for the week ahead.
Fortnightly, for small offices, light foot traffic
Small offices, 1 to 5 staff, not many visitors, mostly heads-down desk work. The place doesn't get heavy use, but you still want it looking right.
Fortnightly works if the team tidies as they go. If the kitchen sink fills up or the bathroom needs more than a quick reset between visits, you're really in weekly territory and the gap will show.
Periodic deep cleans, quarterly or biannual
Whatever your regular routine, every three to six months it pays to book a proper deep clean. Carpet steam, high dusting up in the cornices and light fittings and vents, behind and under the furniture, blinds, the outside of the windows, kitchen appliances done properly.
This is the stuff a regular clean doesn't get to. Done quarterly, it stops the slow build-up that makes an office feel tired without anyone being able to say why. Once a year resets the whole place before tax time or a busy stretch.
Quick guide
| Office size | Foot traffic | Suggested frequency |
|---|---|---|
| 1-5 staff | Low | Fortnightly + quarterly deep |
| 5-20 staff | Medium | Weekly + quarterly deep |
| 20-50 staff | Medium-high | Twice-weekly + biannual deep |
| 50+ or customer-facing | High | Daily + quarterly deep |
The honest take
The right frequency is the one where the office never looks tired between visits. If staff or clients are noticing grime before the next clean, you're due more often. If it still looks fresh at the end of every cycle, you've got it right. Simple as that.
Not sure where you land? Book an on-site walkthrough and I'll tell you straight what I'd run. Sometimes that's less than you came in asking for. I'd rather get the schedule right than sell you cleans you don't need.
Ash