Janitorial services pricing is usually quoted as a flat monthly rate, an hourly rate or a rate per square foot. The number behind any of them comes from how often the crew comes, the building's foot traffic, the square footage cleaned and the team size needed. Restroom count, floor types, after-hours access and specialty areas adjust it.
Texas Industrial Cleaning Services is a commercial cleaning company serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. We provide office cleaning, commercial floor cleaning (including stripping and waxing), and recurring janitorial services for offices, medical and dental practices, and multi-tenant buildings across Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Collin counties.
There's no price on this page, and one section below explains why. What you'll find instead is how a quote gets built, what belongs in the monthly figure, and how to put competing bids side by side.
How is janitorial pricing usually set?
Most janitorial pricing is quoted one of 3 ways: per square foot, by the hour, or as a flat monthly rate. They're different ways of packaging the same thing, which is the labor it takes to clean your building on your schedule.
| Model | How it's stated | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Per square foot | A rate times the building's square footage | Whose measurement, and whether it's the leased total or the space actually cleaned |
| Hourly | A rate times the hours on site | How many hours a visit is expected to take, and how you'd know they were worked |
| Flat monthly | One price for a written scope and schedule | That every area, task and frequency is listed, so you know what the price buys |
Our recurring janitorial work is billed as a flat monthly rate, set from a free on-site walkthrough. A flat rate means the invoice doesn't move because one night ran long, but it's only as good as the scope written under it.
What drives the cost of recurring janitorial service?
Frequency, foot traffic, square footage and team size set most of the monthly cost. Restrooms, floors, access and specialty areas adjust it from there.
- Frequency. Each visit added is another full pass through the every-visit tasks: trash, restrooms, break room, entrances.
- Foot traffic. A small office with busy restrooms and a packed break room can take more labor than a bigger one that sits quiet half the week.
- Square footage. The space the crew actually cleans, measured on site. It's often less than the leased total once storage, server rooms and locked areas come out.
- Team size. A larger or more detailed scope needs more people on site to finish within the night.
- Restroom count. Restrooms get cleaned and disinfected fixture by fixture, so 6 restrooms take more time than 2 in the same square footage.
- Floor types. Carpet gets vacuumed; hard floors get swept and mopped or machine-scrubbed. A building with both, plus periodic floor care, carries more line items than one with wall-to-wall carpet.
- After-hours access. Keys, fobs, alarm codes and any building rules about when crews can enter all shape how a night gets scheduled.
- Specialty areas. Medical and dental suites, for example, need disinfectants registered with the Environmental Protection Agency on patient-contact surfaces, used at the contact time on the label.
Why is there no reliable cost per square foot for janitorial service?
A square foot isn't a unit of work, so a per-square-foot janitorial rate only fits the building it was measured on, with that building's traffic, restrooms, floors and schedule.
Take 2 offices of the same size, as an illustration. One has 2 restrooms, carpet throughout and 25 people, half of them remote on any given day. The other has 8 restrooms, a busy break room, hard floors at every entrance and a lobby with visitors all day. One rate per square foot would overcharge the first building and leave the second one short-staffed.
That's why we don't publish a number. Cost-per-square-foot figures found online rarely say what kind of building, what scope or what year they came from, and a recurring price set without seeing the building is a guess about square footage and traffic. We'd rather walk your building and give you a rate that's locked for the 12-month term.
What should be in the monthly price?
The monthly price should buy a written scope: every area, every task and how often each one happens. If a quote is one line with a total, you can't tell what you're paying for.
Check that the scope covers these layers:
- The every-visit core. Trash and recycling, restrooms, break-room surfaces, and the floors and entrances people walk on most.
- Rotation tasks. Dusting, low-traffic carpet, interior glass, baseboards, vents and high dusting, each with a set day or week so they don't wait for a complaint.
- Consumables. Toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap and liners. Ask whether the price covers the supplies themselves, the restocking labor, both or neither, and get the answer in writing. We can write consumables restocking into a janitorial scope, so dispensers stay topped up and anything running low gets flagged.
- Floor care. Periodic work like stripping and waxing tile, scrub and recoat, and burnishing. It belongs on its own line with its own frequency, because the area has to be closed while it's done. Here's how often vinyl composition tile needs a strip and wax.
- Sales tax. Janitorial services for commercial buildings are generally taxable in Texas (see the Comptroller's guidance on janitorial services). Ask whether each quote includes it.
From one of our recurring accounts: we clean a corporate office 3 nights a week, and every visit covers the full scope: restrooms, carpet, break rooms, windows and the lobby. Nothing waits for a rotation slot. Another building could keep the same 3 nights with carpet on a weekly line, and that's a different scope with a different price.
How do you compare janitorial quotes line for line?
Put every bid on the same scope before comparing totals. Quotes that look far apart are often pricing 2 different versions of your building.
Run each proposal through these 8 questions:
- Same areas? Every room listed, plus the rooms deliberately left out.
- Same frequency per area? Nightly restrooms in one bid and 3 nights in another is a scope difference, not a price difference.
- Same square footage? Ask how each vendor measured, and whether they walked the building.
- Same supplies? Who buys consumables, who restocks them, and who brings chemicals and equipment.
- Floor care in or out? And if it's in, at what frequency.
- Tax shown? A quote with sales tax next to one without can look closer or further apart than they really are.
- Same terms? Length of the agreement, the exit notice, and whether the rate is fixed for the term.
- Same fix for a miss? How you report one and how it gets put right.
For the contract side of that list, here's what a janitorial contract should include. Ours run 12 months with a 30-day no-cause exit and the rate locked for the term, on a written scope. If something in the agreed scope gets missed, we re-clean the affected area.
How can you lower janitorial cost without cutting what matters?
Put the visits where the use is. Most savings come from matching the schedule to how the building is actually used, not from cutting the rooms people notice first.
- Split the schedule. Restrooms and the break room can get more visits than private offices that sit quiet. We set schedules per facility, and split schedules are fine.
- Rotate low-use tasks. Dusting empty desks on every visit is labor a hybrid office doesn't need. Give it a set day instead.
- Trim the space, not the core. Rooms nobody uses, like a storage room or a closed wing, can come off the scope or drop to an occasional line.
- Use Saturday if it fits. Saturday service is available; we don't clean on Sundays.
- Keep routine floor upkeep on the list. Grit left on hard floors wears the finish in the traffic lanes, which brings the bigger strip-and-refinish work due sooner.
What shouldn't be trimmed: restrooms, trash and the break room. They're the rooms that can't wait, and they're what staff and visitors judge the whole building by. If you're unsure how many nights those rooms need, here's how to choose between nightly, 3-night and weekly cleaning.
Needs change, too. If your headcount or schedule shifts mid-contract, we revisit the contract and update it to reflect the new schedule.
What does the walkthrough decide?
The walkthrough is where the price gets built. We measure the space that actually gets cleaned, count restrooms, look at floors and traffic, ask about access and any specialty areas, and agree which rooms get which frequency. The scope is written from that, and the flat monthly rate is set from the scope.
A few things that come with it on our recurring accounts:
- The walkthrough is free and on site, before any number.
- We take on facilities of 1,000 sq ft and up.
- The same crew comes every visit, so the people who learn your building keep cleaning it.
- We're fully insured, with a certificate of insurance available on request.
We work across Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Collin counties. To see the recurring scope we price from, visit our page on janitorial services in Dallas, or book a free walkthrough and we'll put a real number on your building.
