If you’ve requested cleaning quotes for a commercial building in DC, Maryland, Virginia, or Pennsylvania and gotten back wildly different numbers, you’re not imagining it. Commercial cleaning pricing depends on a handful of concrete factors — square footage, how often you need service, your type of facility, and how many restrooms you’re maintaining. This guide breaks down exactly how those factors combine, using the same pricing model Senate Cleaning uses to build real proposals.
Base Rate by Cleaning Frequency
The starting point for any janitorial quote is a rate per square foot per month, which scales with how often your space gets serviced:
- Bi-weekly service: $0.07 / sq ft / month
- Weekly service: $0.09 / sq ft / month
- Three times per week: $0.11 / sq ft / month
- Daily service: $0.13 / sq ft / month
More frequent service costs more per visit in total, but the per-visit cost actually drops — daily cleaning distributes the work (and the price) across more visits instead of asking one visit to do more.
How Facility Type Changes Your Rate
The base rate above gets adjusted by a multiplier depending on what kind of facility you’re running. Different facility types have different cleaning demands — a medical office has stricter sanitation requirements than a warehouse, for example:
- Warehouse / Industrial: 0.85× (below baseline)
- Office: 1.00× (baseline)
- Retail: 1.05×
- Government: 1.15×
- Medical / Healthcare: 1.25×
Restroom Servicing
Restrooms are priced as a flat add-on rather than folded into the per-square-foot rate, since restroom-heavy floor plans need disproportionately more time and supplies: $45 per restroom, per month, added on top of your base rate.
A Worked Example
Say you’re running a 5,000 sq ft office in Rockville, MD, cleaned three nights a week, with two restrooms:
- Base: 5,000 sq ft × $0.11 × 1.00 (office) = $550/month
- Restrooms: 2 × $45 = $90/month
- Estimated monthly total: $640/month
This is illustrative — your actual quote depends on your building’s specific layout, condition, and access, which is exactly what a walkthrough is for.
Floor Care Is Priced Separately
Tile stripping/waxing and carpet cleaning aren’t part of the monthly janitorial rate above — they’re quoted per visit, scaled by square footage, with a minimum per job:
- Tile / hard floor stripping and waxing: starts at a $175 minimum per visit
- Carpet cleaning: starts at a $145 minimum per visit
Most facilities schedule these quarterly or semi-annually rather than monthly, depending on foot traffic.
What This Guide Doesn’t Cover
This model covers standard janitorial service. It doesn’t include one-time deep cleans, post-construction cleanup, valet trash service, or supply costs if you want Senate Cleaning to stock consumables — those get quoted separately based on scope.
Want an exact number for your building?
These rates are a starting point — a walkthrough lets us see your actual space and give you a real, no-obligation proposal.
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