Residential Cleaning Or Commercial Cleaning ⎯ How To Do Both

You started out cleaning homes. Now you’re looking beyond residential cleaning to adding commercial accounts like offices, shops or salons.

What are some ways you can combine both residential and commercial cleaning as a solo cleaner, working with a partner, a helper or a small team?

How Residential and Commercial Cleaning Differ

Residential cleaning and commercial cleaning are two different types of cleaning businesses.

Residential cleaning is done in customers homes, usually during the day.

Residential cleaners often use the same types of cleaning supplies and equipment homeowners use.

With residential cleaning, it’s common to get paid the same day you clean.

On The Other Hand With Commercial Cleaning…

Commercial cleaning is done in a variety of public spaces outside of people’s homes.

Those spaces can include churches and childcare centers, salons, shops, restaurants, fitness centers and offices.

Some commercial cleaning like small office cleaning, apartment turnovers and construction cleanup can be done during the day, but most commercial cleaning is done at night.

Commercial cleaners often use heavy duty equipment rarely used in cleaning homes, like industrial floor scrubbers and odor eliminator machines.

With commercial cleaning, it is common for the cleaning company to submit an invoice and wait weeks (and sometimes months) to get paid by their customers.

What Type Of Cleaning Business Do You Want?

Some cleaning business owners naturally choose one over the other based on their experience and how they want to work.

For example, I was completely comfortable working with homeowners helping them maintain their houses, apartments and condos.

Plus, I knew from the beginning, I wanted to work solo on weekdays. I didn’t want to work nights, weekends or major holidays.

I also wanted to be paid before I cleaned; no invoicing and waiting for payment or chasing down late-paying customers.

Related: Get Paid First

Why Other Business Owners Choose Commercial Cleaning

Pros and Cons of Residential And Commercial Cleaning

Before you start a cleaning business, it’s a good idea to give a lot of thought to who you want to serve and how you plan to go about serving them.

The most basic decision you’ll make is whether to clean residential (homes) or commercial (business) spaces.

Tom Watson from the Cleaning 4 Profit podcast talks about the pros and cons of commercial cleaning vs. residential cleaning in this nine minute podcast episode.

Click or tap the audio player to hear the entire episode.

Tom’s Watson’s 3 Big Questions

Tom highlights what you need to consider about both types of cleaning businesses. Then he describes what he likes about both residential cleaning and commercial cleaning:

So which type of cleaning business will make the most money? As Tom explains:

“You can make a lot of money going either route. When you perform a service well, the money’s gonna find you.”

Combining the Two—Start Where You Are

Some self-employed house cleaners have successfully combined residential and commercial cleaning in their businesses. So it’s not an either / or question.

The question is how to combine the two in a way that makes sense for you, your business and your goals.

The best way to combine house cleaning with some type of commercial cleaning is to start where you are.

Make Sure You Have The Basics

Before you look for your first commercial account, make sure your cleaning business is fully licensed, bonded and insured.

Commercial customers are more likely to insist on full insurance coverage because their insurance company may require all vendors be bonded and insured to reduce their liability.

If you plan to add commercial accounts, setting up a Limited Liability Company (LLC) can provide your solo, partnership or small team cleaning business with much needed legal protection.

Starting As A Residential Cleaner

If you’ve built a base of customers who know, like and trust you as a residential cleaner, some baby steps into commercial cleaning can be:

◯ Tell your current residential customers you also clean small offices, shops, salons, places of worship, apartment or condo common areas and ask for referrals.

◯ Reach out to your church, attorney, tax preparer, hair stylist, or barber. Find out if they need help cleaning their businesses or meeting spaces. Get experience in cleaning their spaces. Make careful notes about the cleaning their business requires. Use what you’ve learned to clean similar businesses.

◯ You may already know people in a few churches, small offices, apartment buildings, barber shops or hair salons who know, like and trust you enough to be your first customers.

◯ Get training and certification for safe medical cleaning if you plan to clean medical and dental offices.

◯ Take before and after photos of your commercial work and add information about your new commercial cleaning services to your website and social media posts.

Move Past Hesitation

You may have hesitated to combine your house cleaning accounts with commercial accounts because you imagine “commercial” equals large office buildings, industrial facilities, restaurants and large stores.

You may be thinking a one or two person business is just too small to handle any commercial accounts.

Think again. Commercial accounts come in all sizes.

Commercial accounts can include:

Plus there are small attorney, accountant and other professional offices (with 2 to 4 staff members) that need regular cleaning of their restrooms and staff break rooms, plus dusting and vacuuming.

Starting as a one person or small-team cleaning business is not a disadvantage with smaller commercial accounts.

Your Small Cleaning Business Advantage

According to Tom Watson, a small cleaning business can be a top pick for office managers of small, local businesses.

For an office manager, shop owner or building manager, it can be a plus to work with someone local who:

A cleaning company that delivers great cleaning and customer service is more important to those decision-makers than company size.

Become An Expert

Knowing your customer’s needs is a real plus with small commercial accounts.

For example, over the past year, you’ve signed on 3 hair salons as commercial customers. By the time you started cleaning the third salon, you knew:

You’ve become an expert due to your experience with similar businesses.

As an expert, you’re able to point out what their salon needs and how you can solve their cleaning problems before they tell you.

You have a deep understanding of their cleaning needs and how your company can meet those needs.

Plus you now have a track record of delivering reliable, professional cleaning to other salons in your area.

As an expert, your value to your customer is greater than your company size.

Cleaning Is Problem Solving

To do both residential and commercial cleaning well enough for “the money to find you”, start by solving problems for one group of cleaning customers.

Build a solid base with those customers and a great reputation.

Then branch out to solve problems for another group of customers.

Become a problem solver for your customers and the money will find you no matter who you serve.