Maintenance, deep and interim cleaning: the differences
"Cleaning" is not the same as "cleaning". Anyone who plans and calculates the maintenance of a building has to know the various cleaning types, because each has a different purpose, a different interval and a different effort.
In practice, the terms are often mixed up. This has two consequences. Budgets reflect day-to-day operations but forget the major passes. Quotes cannot be compared because window cleaning is included in one but not in the other. This article describes the four cleaning types individually, shows their share of the annual effort and explains how they feed into a transparent cleaning calculation .
The four cleaning types at a glance
The following table summarises how the types differ. The shares refer to the total annual effort in hours, not to the number of call-outs.
| Cleaning type | Typical interval | Typical activities | Share of effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Routine cleaning | daily to weekly | Floors, sanitary, waste | 80 to 90% |
| Interim cleaning | 2 to 6 times a year | Refresh floor care | 2 to 5% |
| Deep cleaning | 1 to 2 times a year | deep clean, apply care | 4 to 10% |
| Special cleaning | as required or per event | Windows, facades, events | 2 to 6% |
| Total | 100 % |
Indicative values for orientation, as at October 2026.
Routine cleaning
Routine cleaning is the regular, recurring cleaning in everyday operations, daily, several times a week or weekly. It keeps rooms usable and hygienic: floors, sanitary facilities, surfaces, waste bins. It accounts for the largest part of the ongoing cleaning effort and is therefore the core of every calculation.
Purpose: Ensuring usability, hygiene and a tidy appearance. Routine cleaning prevents dirt from becoming ingrained. It thus extends the intervals between the major passes.
Typical activities: Sweeping, vacuuming or damp cleaning floors, cleaning sanitary facilities and replenishing consumables, emptying waste bins, wiping surfaces and contact areas, keeping entrances and dirt barrier matting clean.
Interval: In school buildings, classrooms are usually cleaned five times a week, corridors daily, while ancillary rooms are cleaned only weekly. WC facilities often need more than one pass per day. The Operating weeks determine how often this interval actually occurs in the year: 39 school weeks give around 195 cleanings per year, whereas a continuously used administration building gives about 250.
Method: From the mop through the single-disc machine to the scrubber-dryer. The method has a strong influence on the Performance value: machine-cleaned linoleum achieves many times the area that can be damp-cleaned by hand. That is why machine use pays off above all on large, open areas such as gyms or corridors.
Share of annual effort: 80 to 90 percent. Anyone who calculates the routine cleaning properly has the largest part of the budget under control.
Interim cleaning
Interim cleaning lies between maintenance and deep cleaning. It refreshes more heavily used areas at longer intervals, without the full effort of a deep clean, for example a more intensive floor care a few times a year.
Purpose: Postponing the deep cleaning and keeping the appearance stable between two passes. A well-scheduled Interim cleaning is considerably cheaper than an additional deep cleaning.
Typical activities: Spray cleaning or polishing of coated hard floors, interim cleaning of carpets with pad or foam, more intensive treatment of traffic zones and entrance areas, descaling in sanitary areas.
Interval: Two to six times a year, usually on areas with heavy public traffic. In a school building this mainly affects entrances, main staircases and changing rooms, not the individual classrooms.
Share of annual effort: 2 to 5 percent. The item is small, but it affects the service life of the coverings and thus value preservation.
Deep cleaning
Deep cleaning is the thorough intensive cleaning at long intervals, about once or twice a year. It removes what accumulates in everyday use: floor coverings are deep-cleaned, partly re-treated or recoated. The effort per pass is high, the frequency low, it protects the building fabric and preserves value.
Purpose: Removing old finish films, ingrained residues and deposits in joints and edges and restoring the surface to its original condition. Without Deep cleaning a covering loses its ability to be maintained and has to be replaced sooner.
Typical activities: Clearing out furniture, stripping coatings, machine deep cleaning of floors, rinsing, re-finishing or recoating, reworking edge zones and skirtings by hand, moving the furniture back in.
Interval: Once or twice a year, in schools typically during the summer holidays, in administration buildings often over a long weekend. In retirement and care homes it is rotated room by room because the rooms are occupied.
Method: By machine with a single-disc machine and wet vacuum, on large areas with a scrubber-dryer. The drying and curing times often determine the planning more than the actual working time, because a room cannot be used during this period.
Share of annual effort: 4 to 10 percent, depending on the mix of coverings and the level of use.
Special cleaning
Special work falls outside the regular rhythm: window cleaning, facades, post-construction cleaning or occasion-based deployments. They are planned and calculated separately.
Purpose and scope: Everything that does not fit into a fixed weekly or annual rhythm or that requires additional funds. This includes window and glass cleaning, facade and blind cleaning, cleaning after conversions, work after events, removing soiling caused by water damage as well as work with a lifting platform or rope access.
Interval: Window cleaning is the only item that can be planned reliably, usually one to four times a year, depending on location and accessibility. The other special work is managed as an annual budget and called off as required.
Share of annual effort: 2 to 6 percent. Because this work is often carried out by third parties, it frequently bypasses the actual cleaning planning and is missing from the overall picture.
How the cleaning types feed into the calculation
Every cleaning type is calculated in the same way, but with its own values. The formula is always: area divided by performance value gives the time per pass, multiplied by the number of passes per year gives the Annual hours. Only two figures differ: the performance value and the number of passes. The performance value differs because a deep cleaning progresses much more slowly than a routine cleaning.
An example: a classroom with linoleum is done in a few minutes in routine cleaning. Over 195 cleanings per year, however, these minutes add up to around 56 hours. The deep cleaning of the same room, with clearing out, stripping and re-finishing, takes many times as long as a routine pass. But it occurs only once a year and therefore stays small over the year as a whole.
The sum across all areas and all cleaning types gives the total hours. Divided by the net annual working time of a full-time position of 1,840 hours, that gives the workloads in FTE percent. This calculation is explained in detail in the cleaning calculation guide.
Why deep and special cleaning are often missing from budgets
There are recurring reasons why these items are forgotten:
- Different responsibility. The routine cleaning is done by your own staff, the deep cleaning is contracted out to a company. The two budgets sit in different accounts and are never added together.
- Different time frame. Anyone who observes one week sees only routine cleaning. Deep cleaning falls in the holidays and is invisible in a weekly view.
- Missing area basis. In many inventories, window areas are not recorded at all because only floor areas were captured. What is not recorded is not calculated.
- Unclear contracts. Quotes often do not state whether the deep cleaning is included. If it is charged additionally, a budget gap arises that nobody expected.
The countermeasure is simple: manage all four cleaning types in the same Asset inventory and evaluate them together, regardless of who carries them out.
Worked example: the 2,300 hours of a school building
A school building with 3,000 m2 of cleaning area and 39 school weeks comes to around 2,300 cleaning hours per year. This is how they are distributed across the cleaning types.
| Cleaning type | Area | Floor covering | Interval | Hours per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Routine | Classroom | Linoleum | 5× per week | 1'170 |
| Routine | WC facilities | Tiles | 2× daily | 366 |
| Routine | Corridors | Linoleum | daily | 293 |
| Routine | Gym | Sports floor | 5× per week | 195 |
| Routine | Offices | Carpet | 2× per week | 47 |
| Routine | Ancillary rooms | Concrete | weekly | 20 |
| Deep cleaning | Classroom | Linoleum | 1× per year | 110 |
| Interim cleaning | Entrances | Tiles | 4× per year | 45 |
| Window cleaning | Windows | 2× per year | 40 | |
| Special cleaning | Events | as required | 15 | |
| Total | 2'301 |
The routine cleaning adds up to 2,091 hours, i.e. around 91 percent. Deep, interim and special cleaning together come to 210 hours or around 9 percent, for a school building with robust linoleum floors a value at the lower end of the range. At 2,300 hours and a net annual working time of 1,840 hours, that corresponds to around 125 FTE percent for the cleaning alone. Anyone who leaves out the 210 hours calculates with around 114 FTE percent and is therefore a good 11 FTE percent too low. At internal full costs of 45 CHF per hour, that is around 9,450 CHF missing from the budget.
Quality and visibility: what users notice
The cleaning types are perceived very differently by users. The routine cleaning determines the everyday impression: an overflowing waste bin, a paper towel dispenser that has not been refilled or a stain in the entrance area is noticed immediately and triggers feedback. The deep cleaning, by contrast, is noticed by almost nobody, its benefit only shows over the years in the fact that a covering is still intact.
This has a practical consequence: when savings have to be made, the deep cleaning is often the first thing to be cut, because its absence remains invisible in the short term. The bill comes later, when coverings have to be replaced early. Conversely, the everyday impression can be improved considerably with a few well-chosen additional passes in visible zones, without putting much strain on the overall budget.
It helps to separate perception and effort. Visible zones are entrances, corridors, sanitary facilities and meeting rooms. In terms of area they often account for only a quarter, but they shape the impression almost entirely. Feedback from day-to-day operations can be recorded via notifications and tasks and reconciled with the planning instead of being dealt with one by one.
Why the distinction matters
- Every cleaning type has its own interval and thus its own annual effort.
- Only those who separate them cleanly get a realistic and transparent calculation.
- In quotes and tenders, the clear separation makes services comparable.
- Showing them separately reveals where savings can be made without jeopardising value preservation.
- For Route and annual planning the intervals are needed individually anyway, because deep cleaning falls in operating breaks.
If you are putting the services out to tender, the article Tendering cleaning sets out the requirements for a specification that shows all four types separately.
FAQ
How often does a building need a deep cleaning?
As a rule once a year, twice for heavily used areas. What matters is the covering and the level of use, not the calendar: a coated hard floor in an entrance area needs a deep cleaning more often than the same covering in an office. A well-scheduled interim cleaning can extend the interval.
Is window cleaning part of deep cleaning?
No, it counts as special cleaning and is calculated separately. Window cleaning has its own area basis, glass area instead of floor area, as well as its own performance values, which depend heavily on accessibility. In specifications it is therefore shown as a separate item.
Can interim cleaning replace deep cleaning?
It can extend the interval, but it does not replace the deep cleaning. The interim cleaning works on the finish layer, the deep cleaning removes it. At some point a worn layer can no longer be refreshed and has to be stripped off.
Which cleaning type causes the highest costs?
The routine cleaning, by a wide margin, it accounts for 80 to 90 percent of the annual hours. Per pass, the deep cleaning is the most expensive, but over the year it is the smaller item. Anyone who wants to reduce costs achieves far more through intervals and methods in the routine cleaning than through the major passes.
Conclusion
Routine, interim, deep and special cleaning interlock, each with its own purpose, its own interval and its own share of the annual effort. Anyone who only calculates the routine cleaning is around 10 to 20 percent too low; anyone who saves on the deep cleaning shifts costs into value preservation. easyCAFM records these cleaning types separately and calculates the total annual effort from them transparently. The article Creating a cleaning concept shows how this becomes a complete concept.
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