One of the most common pricing mistakes in commercial cleaning is treating all facilities the same. A 10,000 sq ft office and a 10,000 sq ft medical clinic are not the same bid. They require different production rates, different cleaning protocols, and different prices. Here's how to think about it.
Why Facility Type Changes Your Price
Production rate — how many square feet a cleaner can clean per hour — is the foundation of your labor cost estimate. That number varies significantly by facility because cleaning complexity varies. Open floor plans move fast. Hospitals with strict disinfection protocols don't. If you use a single default rate across all your bids, you're systematically overpricing easy jobs and underpricing hard ones.
Production Rate Benchmarks by Facility Type
- Office / Commercial: 2,500–3,500 sq ft/hr. Open floor plans and standard workstations clean quickly. Private offices with many surfaces slow you down. Cubicle-heavy layouts fall in the middle. Use 3,000 as a safe default if you're unsure.
- Medical / Healthcare: 1,500–2,500 sq ft/hr. Disinfection protocols, restricted access areas, frequent touch-point wiping, and regulatory requirements all add time. Budget conservatively here — underestimating on a medical contract is expensive and hard to recover from.
- School / Education: 2,000–3,000 sq ft/hr. Classrooms and hallways clean efficiently. Cafeterias and gymnasiums are faster. Restrooms — and schools have many of them — slow the pace considerably. The range is wide because school layouts vary more than any other facility type.
- Industrial / Warehouse: 3,500–5,000 sq ft/hr. Large open concrete floors clean very quickly with the right equipment. Minimal restrooms and detail work keep the rate high. Equipment-dense manufacturing floors will pull the rate toward the lower end.
- Retail: 3,000–4,000 sq ft/hr. Display fixtures and merchandise create obstacles. Fitting rooms and restrooms add scope. Post-weekend cleanup takes meaningfully longer than a weekday maintenance clean — factor that into your frequency pricing.
Applying This to a Bid
Use the production rate to estimate hours per cleaning visit:
Hours per visit = Square footage ÷ Production rate
Multiply by your cleanings per month to get monthly hours, then apply your burdened hourly rate to get monthly labor cost. Add supplies, overhead allocation, and your target margin to reach the suggested monthly price.
Example: 8,000 sq ft medical clinic at 2,000 sq ft/hr = 4 hours per visit. At 20 cleanings/month = 80 hours/month. At $21/hr burdened rate = $1,680 labor cost/month. With 15% overhead and 20% margin applied, the suggested monthly price lands around $3,300.
Two Things to Watch For
New accounts always take longer than estimated. Your crew doesn't know the building layout, where supplies are stored, or the fastest route through the space. Budget an extra 10–15% on hours for the first 60–90 days, then tighten the estimate as the team gets efficient.
Verify the square footage. Client-provided numbers are frequently wrong — sometimes because they don't know, sometimes because they're being optimistic. Walk the space yourself or use floor plans whenever possible. A 10% error in square footage becomes a 10% error in your hours estimate and a direct hit to margin.