Whether you’re starting a cleaning business from the ground up or extending your current cleaning services, you’ll need a good understanding of the many cleaning service types available.  While the activities of various cleaning services are diverse, they share traits, equipment, and even consumers.

You could have a customer that requires a deep cleaning service for their home, for example. They wish to suggest you to their office administrator for a business cleaning service because they were so impressed by your job quality. Alternatively, the same customer requires bi-weekly washing and dry cleaning services.

Although it is a fantastic chance, you should not take it lightly because completing a commercial cleaning project without a hitch will require specialist equipment, cleaning supplies, and even more employees on your crew. To put it another way, you should have a good idea of what each cleaning service type comprises before diving in.

Did you know?

The U.S cleaning services market contributed around $55 billion of the revenue in 2020 and is expected to grow over 52% by the end of this year due to the airborne COVID spread.  

Residential Cleaning Services

Also known as domestic or household cleaning is the process of cleaning a customer’s home when he/she is present or currently out of the house. Customers spend their well-earned money on well-deserved domestic help as it helps them spend more time with their families instead of fussing over household chores. 

  • Crew: It is your choice to fly solo or hire employees as household cleaning jobs tend to be small and manageable
  • Opportunity: A Statista Report shows that the household cleaners market is estimated to grow up to $40.38 billion by 2025
  • Services: Depends on the client you choose, but common cleaning services for this category are room cleaning, kitchen cleaning, bathroom cleaning, vacuuming, and dusting. As your client profile increases, you can offer add-ons like washing, ironing, tidying, strata cleaning, and more
  • Cost: With a low barrier to entry, your startup cost will be pretty low
  • Equipment: You can use your own cleaning products or request clients to supply them

Commercial Cleaning Services

  • Also known as office cleaning, is defined as the process of cleaning commercial buildings such as office spaces, schools, community buildings, and more. The cleaning can be scheduled either during the working hours when premises are open or outside of working hours when premises are closed.  
  • Crew: You will definitely need a team since office premises tend to be a lot larger in area than average homes and generally tend to be time-consuming yet profitable
  • Opportunity: A recent report on cleaning services shows that commercial cleaning services have a record of the highest revenue in the different cleaning services with an expected CAGR of 5.8%
  • Services: Common services include carpet care, upholstery care, wiping, windows washing, dusting, vents and air duct cleaning, toilet cleaning, and more
  • Cost: Being a competitive market, your investments will be higher since you will need specialist cleaning equipment, a crew, and transport. Since most of these are risky in nature, a few states require businesses to get proper licensing before they get into commercial cleaning services.
  • Equipment: While a few office spaces have their own cleaning equipment, usually, it is up to the service provider to go in prepared

Janitorial Cleaning Services

  • Although most people tend to use janitorial and commercial cleaning services as synonyms or deem one to be a subset of the other, they are quite different from each other. Janitorial cleaning services covers every day, ongoing maintenance and cleaning of buildings like office spaces, schools, industries while commercial cleaning involves bigger, deep-cleaning tasks that are performed once a few times in a year.  
  • Crew: It is advisable to have a crew in place before offering specialized cleaning services since there is a steady stream of work coming in

  • Opportunity: A recent study on the Global Janitorial Service values the market size $252.79 million in 2019 that will grow at a compound annual rate of 3.1% within 2027

  • Services: It covers the typical building and premises maintenance activities such as dusting, mopping, sweeping, garbage disposal, air duct cleaning, changing bulbs, refilling tissues, and more
  • Cost: Investment and cost spent may fluctuate based on the application you choose (residential, commercial, or industrial) to offer and the equipment you decide to use
  • Equipment: You can choose to buy specialized cleaning equipment and products or decide to stick with good-old hand cleaning

Laundry and Dry Cleaning Services

  • Although they may sound similar, laundry cleaning and dry cleaning are quite different from each other. While laundry cleaning uses soaps, detergents, and softeners to wash clothes, dry cleaning uses high-end chemicals to remove persistent stains and grease out of clothes.
  • Crew: You will definitely need a team since laundry businesses need premises and dry cleaning requires proper technique

  • Opportunity: The global dry-cleaning and laundry services market which was valued approximately $118.9 billion in 2018 is predicted to hit a booming $180 billion by 2022

  • Services: While the equipment and articles cleaned remain constant, the way services are provided vary. You can either choose to offer a self-service laundry cleaning or hire a team to do it for your customers. Additionally, you can extend fluff & fold, dry cleaning, and more
  • Cost: Initial investment can be little or a lot depending on your choice of location, staff, equipment, and other aspects
  • Equipment: You can choose to clean clothes manually or invest in assets like industrial laundry machines

Sanitization and Disinfection

  • In this COVID age, it is critical to keep both homes and offices free from harmful viruses and bacteria that can cause allergies, colds, and coughs. Sanitization and disinfection use physical and chemical means to ensure that our dwellings and office spaces are safe for human inhabitation and cut the COVID chain.
  • Crew: While the guidelines to be followed are not as strict as the medical sterilization process, it is better to have a team of qualified cleaners

  • Opportunity:  Under current circumstances, there is expected to be a surge in demand for Disinfection and Sanitizing Services Market from a base line of $612.91 million(2019) to a colossal $1,121 million in 2020

  • Services: While both are a form of decontamination, they differ in application and result. While sanitization mechanically removes microbes and reduces the number of bacteria on a surface or equipment, disinfection destroys viruses, bacteria, and fungi that are present on inanimate objects
  • Cost: While it doesn’t cost much to start offering sanitization services it does require a considerable amount of specialized training to get the job done effectively
  • Equipment: With technological improvements introduced in the market, it is paramount to stay on top of those changes and adapt to them

Green Cleaning Services

  • Nowadays, the term ‘green’ represents a movement to save our planet and ecosystem as a whole. The entire aspect of this type of cleaning service is to do more (cleaning) with less (chemicals). Supporting green cleaning services can help businesses gain the society’s respect and showcase a sense of social responsibility.   
  • What’s more, most governments and commercial businesses consider green cleaning services to be worth their salt only when they are properly certified. While there are a ton of green-cleaning services available in the market, Green Seal and ISSA certifications are the most popular green-cleaning certifications.  

  • Opportunity: According to a recent Neilsen report, today’s consumers are considering sustainability as a shopping priority and are willing to pay extra for sustainable offerings

  • Advantages: Governments around the world understand the need for eco-friendly services and as a result they provide an array of financial incentives to cleaning service providers who take the green cleaning route
  • Crew: While you can use your existing crew to perform green cleaning services, you may have to educate them on green cleaning practices and train them on the use of green cleaning supplies and equipment
  • Cost: Like other cleaning services, this type of cleaning service can be started easily with a small investment. However, specialized green cleaning products can increase the money spent on cleaning supplies
  • Equipment: To get more done with less, businesses need to invest in high-performance cleaning equipment that are much more secure, reliable, and advanced than their traditional counterparts

Pressure Washing Services

  • Pressure washing cleaning service is the process of using a powerful stream of water (from a high-pressure water spray like a jet or power washer) to clean dirt-ridden carpets, moldy buildings, loose paints on walls, grime-filled objects, muddied vehicles, and other usually hard to clean surfaces.
  • Crew: With the right equipment, you would neither need too many people on your crew nor would they require extensive training to perform their tasks

  • Opportunity: The global pressure washing service market was estimated to be USD 1.88 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 2.03 billion by 2025

  • Services:  Typically, pressure washing service providers take care of specific external cleaning tasks such as tidying up concrete parking areas and driveways and washing high-end industrial machinery which is used for mechanical, transportation, manufacturing, and food processing tasks
  • Cost: As opposed to other professional cleaning services, pressure washing demands a considerable amount of initial investment for the pressure washing gear, trailer, chemicals, operational permits, license expenses, and insurance costs
  • Equipment: In order to make your customers trust in your ability, you need to have the best pressure washing gear which costs a pretty penny

 

  • Growth and strong customer loyalty are top priorities in most small and medium cleaning business companies across the globe, but too few cleaning business owners focus on expanding their cleaning service offerings to tap into novel opportunities and strengthen their existing customer relationships.
  • Understanding the various types of cleaning services offered by your peers, and paying attention to their distinct needs, will help you obtain the required diverse services you can offer your customers and take your cleaning business to the next level.
  • Know of any other types of house cleaning services that we can add to this list? Feel free to pitch in and share your experience. The list is definitely not final and there are more cleaning services that we could add to this list.
  • Tune in next time when we will be discussing the top types of cleaning services you can offer based on the pricing model.