What's a fair price per square foot for nightly office cleaning?

Class A office cleaned five nights per week generally falls between 8 and 14 cents per square foot per clean, with major metros (San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle) at the high end and tertiary markets at the low end. Mid-market office and biotech tenants typically run 7-12 cents. These ranges assume standard fixtures and no day porter. Add 25-40% for medical office and 40-70% for surgical centers.

How do I price a one-time post-construction cleanup?

Post-construction is usually priced hourly with a minimum charge, not per square foot. ISSA production rates for rough post-construction run 200-400 sq ft per hour per worker. Final detail cleaning runs 400-800 sq ft per hour. Most contractors quote 35-50 cents per square foot for rough and 25-35 cents for final. Confirm scope in writing — "clean" without specifics is the single largest source of post-construction disputes.

Why is healthcare cleaning so much more expensive than office?

Three reasons stack: regulatory load (Joint Commission, CDC, EPA List N), chemistry cost (peroxide-based or peracetic acid disinfectants run 3-5x quat costs), and labor specialization (EVS techs trained on terminal cleaning, bloodborne pathogens, and infection control command 15-25% wage premium over general janitors). The combined effect is 2-4x office pricing on a per-square-foot basis.

Should restaurants be priced on square footage or hourly?

Most experienced contractors price restaurant work hourly because grease, equipment cleaning, and kitchen-line detail vary wildly by concept. A fast-casual concept might clean in 2-3 labor hours nightly; a full-service steakhouse with open kitchen can require 5-7 hours. Posting a per-square-foot rate before walking the kitchen invites mispricing.

How much should I charge for day porter services?

Day porter pricing is straightforward — hourly rate plus margin, no square-footage math needed. Loaded labor cost ranges 22-38 dollars per hour in 2026 depending on metro (BLS OEWS May 2024 plus 35-40% burden). Add target margin (typically 18-25% for porter-only work, 25-35% bundled with nightly contracts). Most accounts buy 4, 6, or 8 porter hours per day.

Updated Jun 6, 2026 Reviewed by Opora Editorial Team Editorial standards →

Cleaning Pricing by Facility Type

Every cleaning bid eventually comes down to one number: cost per square foot per month. The number ranges from under $0.05 for a high-bay warehouse to north of $1.20 for a pharma cleanroom, and the reason is never the chemistry — it is the labor productivity rate, the wage tier, and the loaded overhead. The pages below give operators and procurement teams defensible price bands for 25 facility classes, with the labor math built on real BLS OEWS 2024 wages, ISSA 447 cleaning times, BOMA office labor benchmarks, and IFMA operations benchmarks.

Every range is a range, not a point estimate. A bid pinned to a single number assumes that wage, productivity, frequency, and density are constants. They are not. The pages name the variables that move the price up or down, the red flags in bids that come in 30% under the market band, and the line-item builds an operator can defend to a customer who asks for the math.

Cleaning Pricing by Facility Type

Office and corporate

Healthcare

Education

Food, hospitality, and retail

Industrial and warehouse

Public, civic, and specialty

Tools for pricing and bid math

Related glossary terms