No office cleaning routine is complete without addressing floor surfaces. These see heavy traffic during any given day and weather conditions like rain, wind, sleet, and snow add to the debris deposited on carpeting and hard flooring. Due to changing face of the hard flooring industry, commercial cleaning companies must stay on their toes in order to provide the best service to commercial clients.

The U.S. used to rule the hard flooring market with its vinyl composition tile. Vinyl laminates from across the globe are now replacing this surface. Sheets, planks, and tiles can be manufactured to resemble materials including stone and wood. Surfaces are prefinished with a soil, scratch, abrasion, and wear-resistant mineral-impregnated layer. Commercial cleaning services do not need to strip and refinish these hard floors, which makes their jobs easier.

After removing dry soil by sweeping or vacuuming and then scrubbing the surface, the floor will be clean. Another easy-to-clean hard floor surface that has become more popular is concrete. This represents the fastest-growing segment of new materials impacting the commercial flooring market. It can be stamped, stained, colored, coated, and polished and densified. A new concrete floor can be flexible and even self-cleaning, reducing commercial property maintenance costs.

In terms of floor cleaners, the term “chemical” is being used less frequently as sustainable and green cleaners become more popular. As is the case in homes, chemicals, volatile organic compounds, and solvents are not welcome in commercial environments. Commercial customers are asking their cleaning companies about toxic ingredients in floor cleaners and the gases and odors these emit. Some companies have unveiled routine cleaning processes that do not involve strippers, detergents, or even water.

To reduce labor costs, new coatings are being applied to hard floors including epoxies, hybrid densifiers, multi-component water-based products, and light-cured UV coatings. Developments like these require professional cleaning staff to reconsider how and when hard floors are cleaned and restored and what is used to clean them. As the hard flooring market changes, so must the approach taken by commercial cleaning professionals.

With hard floors come safety concerns and cleaning services must guard against trips, slips, and falls. When they are cleaning hard floors, workers should use wet signs, barricades, caution tape, and other blockades. They should always wear anti-slip footwear and should schedule hard floor cleaning outside of work hours, whenever possible. The day will soon come when cleaning workers will be required to complete comprehensive training on hard floor care.