Floor Care vs. Janitorial: What's the Difference?

A lot of building owners pay for nightly cleaning and still watch their floors go dull, gray and scuffed. Nobody is slacking. Cleaning a floor and caring for its finish are two different jobs, and most cleaning contracts only cover the first one.

What janitorial covers

Nightly janitorial keeps a floor clean: dust mopping or vacuuming, damp mopping hard floors, spot cleaning spills, and keeping entry mats in shape. That removes the dirt people track in each day. It does not touch the protective finish on top of a hard floor, and the finish is what makes the floor shine and protects it from wear.

What floor care adds

Floor care maintains that finish on a schedule:

• Burnishing: a high-speed machine polishes the existing finish to bring the shine back.
• Scrub and recoat: the worn top layers come off with the ground-in dirt, and fresh coats go down.
• Strip and refinish: all the old finish comes off and new coats go on, when the finish is worn through.
• Carpet extraction: deep cleaning that pulls out what vacuuming can't, especially at entries.

More detail on timing in how often floors need strip and wax.

Signs your floors need more than mopping

• Gray traffic lanes down the middle of hallways while the edges still shine.
• Dark buildup in corners and along baseboards.
• A white haze in winter from ice melt.
• Carpet at the entry that looks dirty right after it's vacuumed.
• Scuffs and scratches that mopping doesn't touch.

Why it usually falls through the cracks

Floor care needs different machines, more time and a separate schedule, so many cleaning companies leave it out of the nightly price or treat it as "as needed", which in practice means rarely. The building pays a cleaner every night and a separate floor company once in a while, or nobody does the floors at all.

Put both in one scope

The fix is a written scope that covers both: the nightly cleaning tasks, and a floor schedule with burnishing, recoats and strips planned for the year. Our free cleaning scope checklist has a floor care section so it doesn't get left out.

How Fortis handles it

The same crew that cleans your building every night also runs its floor care on a schedule, so the finish never wears through between visits from some other company. We walk the building, look at the floors, and send a written scope within 48 hours. Call or text 309-269-2752, or see commercial floor care.