You do not need to be an expert to tell whether your building is being cleaned properly. You need fifteen minutes, a route, and to know where to look — because the places that reveal cleaning quality are not the places most people check.
Here is the walk. It works whoever cleans your building: an outside contractor, your own team, or the arrangement nobody has reviewed in four years.
Two rules before you start
One: check the edges, not the middles.
The centre of a floor always looks fine. It gets walked on, which polishes it, and it is the easiest part of any surface to clean. Quality shows at transitions — where the floor meets the wall, the lip under a desk, the corner of a stair tread, the six inches behind a door that is always open, the edge of a mat.
Anyone can clean a middle. Edges take a few more seconds each, and those seconds are the first thing to go when a route is running late. If you learn nothing else from this article, learn to look at edges.
Two: walk it at the wrong time.
Most managers form their impression at nine in the morning, when the building was cleaned ten hours earlier and has had almost no use. That tells you something, but only one thing.
There are really two audits here. First thing in the morning tells you what the clean actually achieved. Late afternoon, around four, tells you whether the programme is sized correctly for how the building is used — whether restrooms hold up, whether bins are adequate, whether the entry copes with a day of traffic. Both are useful. Most people only ever do the first.
The route
Fifteen minutes, following the way soil actually moves through a building — from outside in.
0:00–2:00
The approach and entry
Glass on the doors, at hand height and at the edges of the pane.
The mats — are they clean, or saturated? A loaded mat has stopped trapping soil and started redistributing it.
The floor for the first ten feet inside. This is where track-in concentrates and where the difference between programmes is most visible.
The threshold and door track.
Outside: cigarette ends, cobwebs in the door frame corners, the state of the bin nearest the entrance.
2:00–4:00
The main corridor
Baseboards and the floor-to-wall junction along one full corridor. Run your eye along it rather than scanning the middle.
Scuffs and trolley marks on the walls at cart height.
Light switches and door push plates — the highest-touch surfaces in the building and among the most frequently skipped.
Corners where corridors meet. Dust collects there and vacuums rarely reach into them.
4:00–8:00
The restrooms — give this four minutes
Smell it on entry before you look at anything. Persistent odour is usually drains or grout, not surfaces, and it will not be fixed by more wiping.
The floor behind and beside the toilet base, and the grout lines. This is the single most diagnostic spot in a commercial building.
Under the rim, and the hinges and underside of the seat.
The base of the washbasin where it meets the counter, and the overflow.
Dispensers — stocked, working, and clean on top where dust settles.
Mirrors at the edges, not the middle.
The partition feet and the gap between partition and floor.
Vents in the ceiling. Grey furring on the grille means they have not been touched in a long time.
8:00–10:00
One workstation cluster
Pick a cluster at random rather than the one nearest your office.
The floor under the desks, especially where a chair mat ends.
The lip and underside edge of a desk.
Bins — emptied, and is the bin itself clean, or just re-lined?
Horizontal surfaces nobody owns: window sills, the tops of low cabinets, monitor stands.
Glass partitions at hand height.
10:00–12:00
The break room
The floor in front of the sink and under the table edges.
Counter edges and the seal where the counter meets the wall.
The outside of the microwave, fridge and dishwasher — handles particularly.
The bin area, and the floor directly beneath the bin.
Be fair here: much of what goes wrong in a break room is occupants, not cleaners. What you are judging is whether last night’s clean happened, not whether someone spilled coffee at eleven this morning.
12:00–13:30
Above head height
Stop walking and look up. Most people never do.
Air vents and diffusers — grey furring at the edges of the grille.
Light fixtures and the tops of their housings.
The tops of partitions, cabinets and door frames.
Corners where wall meets ceiling, for cobwebs.
This is almost always the weakest category in a building, and often because it was never in the scope rather than because anyone skipped it.
13:30–14:00
One conference room
The table — edges and underside, not the centre.
Chair bases and castors.
The floor under the table, which is the hardest part of the room to reach.
The screen or display, and the credenza top.
14:00–15:00
The supply closet — the one that tells you everything
Open it. Most managers never have.
Is it organised, or is it a pile?
The mop and its bucket — clean and dry, or sitting in yesterday’s water? A mop stored wet is a bacterial problem and a sign of a rushed close.
Are chemicals labelled and stored properly, with lids on?
Vacuum condition, and whether the bag or canister is full.
Microfibre and cloths — clean and separated, or a damp heap?
Is the floor of the closet itself clean?
WHY THE CLOSET MATTERS MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE ON THIS LIST
It is the only room in the building nobody performs for. Everywhere else gets cleaned partly because people will see it. The supply closet is what the crew’s standards look like when nobody is watching — and in our experience it predicts the state of the rest of the building better than any single other indicator.
It also matters practically. A saturated mop, a full vacuum and dirty cloths do not clean. A programme can be failing because of equipment condition rather than effort, and the closet is where you find that out.
Scoring it honestly
You need a standard, otherwise you are just recording your mood. The most widely used one for facilities is APPA’s five levels of cleanliness. Two of them matter for this exercise:
LEVEL WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE MEANING
Level 2 — Ordinary Tidiness Clean and cared-for, with only light dust in corners or on high surfaces The realistic target for an occupied commercial building. This is what you are paying for
Level 3 — Casual Inattention Visible dust, dull or marked floors, fingerprints, fuller bins The point at which occupants begin to notice. If you are here, the slide has already been running a while
Level 1, “Orderly Spotlessness,” is a showpiece standard and it is not what most offices buy or need. Do not hold your building to it and then be disappointed.
The real question the walk answers is narrow and useful: are you still at Level 2, or have you drifted to Level 3 without anyone saying so out loud?
Three findings that mean three different things
What you do next depends entirely on which of these you have found.
Something missed once. A miss. Everyone has them, including the best crews on the best nights. Mention it and move on — escalating a single miss damages a working relationship for nothing.
The same thing missed twice. Now it is a pattern, and patterns are almost never about effort. It usually means the time allocated is too short, the equipment is wrong, or nobody was told that area was theirs. Raise it as a scope question rather than a performance complaint and you will get a much better outcome.
Something that has never been done at all. The vents. The tops of the partitions. Inside the supply closet. Nine times out of ten this is not a failure by anyone — it was simply never in the written scope. That is a contract gap, and it is genuinely not the crew’s fault.
That third category is the most common finding on a first audit, and it is the most fixable. It is also the reason we suggest doing this walk before you consider changing providers: you may be about to replace a vendor for not doing work you never asked them to do.
Do it again in a month
One audit is a snapshot. Two audits a month apart is data, and the comparison is where the value is — a repeat finding tells you far more than any single walk.
Write it down, even roughly. Photographs on your phone are enough. The point is to have a record, because the conversation with a provider goes completely differently when it is specific and dated rather than an impression.
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell if my cleaning company is doing a good job?
Walk the building looking at edges rather than open areas — floor-to-wall junctions, desk lips, behind doors, partition feet — and check the categories that are easy to skip: high surfaces and vents, the area behind toilet bases, light switches and push plates, and the supply closet. Score against APPA Level 2, “Ordinary Tidiness,” which is the realistic standard for an occupied commercial building, and repeat the walk a month later so you have a comparison rather than an impression.
What do office cleaners most often miss?
The categories that get skipped most are above head height (vents, light fixtures, tops of partitions and cabinets), edges and transitions rather than open surfaces, areas requiring furniture to be moved, and anywhere that was never explicitly assigned in the scope. The last of these is usually a contract gap rather than a performance failure.
When should I walk the building to check cleaning quality?
Do it twice. First thing in the morning shows what the overnight clean achieved. Late afternoon, around four, shows whether the programme is sized correctly for how the building is actually used. Most managers only ever look in the morning, which tells them half the story.
What standard should an office be cleaned to?
APPA’s Level 2, “Ordinary Tidiness” — clean and cared-for with only light dust in corners or on high surfaces — is the practical target for most occupied commercial buildings. Level 1, “Orderly Spotlessness,” is a showpiece standard that most offices neither buy nor need. Level 3, “Casual Inattention,” is where occupants start to notice and is the point at which quality has already been slipping for some time
Or have someone else walk it with you
JAN-PRO Commercial Cleaning in Sacramento offers a free facility visit that is essentially this audit, run on your building by someone who does it for a living — about twenty minutes across your entries, floors, restrooms, high surfaces and back-of-house.
You get a written account of what we found. If the answer is that your current programme is in good shape and only the scope needs adjusting, that is a perfectly good outcome and we will say so.
Call (916) 376-8977 or request a facility visit online.