While commercial carpets are often an investment in your office or facility, extending their life span can make them well worth the cost. The best way to ensure your commercial carpet performs for years is to clean it properly and often.
Learn how to make your commercial carpet last longer with the following tips.
Why Cleaning Commerical Carpet Matters
Carpet that experiences heavy foot traffic can quickly become worn down and damaged from dirt and debris, warranting costly repairs or even total replacement. To mitigate damage and keep your carpet looking new, it’s necessary to clean it frequently with the right methods.
Taking proper care of your commercial carpet will protect your investment and have a positive impact on your clients. Cleanliness is an essential part of portraying the right message to customers. When people visit your workplace, clean and well-maintained carpets can help them feel comfortable and establish trust in your business.
Ways to Make Your Commercial Carpet Last Longer
The following carpet cleaning tips and maintenance suggestions can help extend the life of your commercial carpet.
1. Vacuum Regularly
Commercial carpets should be vacuumed regularly. The traffic patterns in each section of your building will determine how frequently you should vacuum, so consider these before implementing a vacuuming schedule. High-traffic areas will need more frequent attention.
Here is more information on heavy, medium and light vacuuming to help you determine your building’s needs:
- Heavy-traffic areas: The most heavily used areas in your building are most likely the entryways, main lobby, reception area, first-floor hallways, elevators, vending stations and breakrooms. These areas receive significant foot traffic, so they should be vacuumed daily.
- Medium-traffic areas: Hallways, upper floors and offices are medium-traffic areas. These places may only need vacuuming two to three times per week.
- Light traffic areas: Light traffic areas are those used less frequently, such as conference rooms or empty offices. Weekly vacuuming is usually sufficient for these spaces.
The importance of vacuuming cannot be overstated. Typically, +80% of the material in your carpet is insoluble. This material simply needs to be vacuumed out. The importance of regular vacuuming is one of the reasons Corporate Cleaning and Facility Services established our custodial division. The best way to protect your carpets is through a regular regimen of vacuuming with an emphasis on high traffic areas. This will reduce wear and extend the life of your carpet.
2. Add Entry Mats
Entry mats help to decrease the amount of dirt that reaches the main carpet in your building. A simple strategy is to place mats in entryways so patrons can wipe debris off their shoes before proceeding further into the building.
By gathering dirt and debris before it has a chance to embed in your carpet, mats help protect your carpet from damage. Be sure to clean them regularly to ensure they’re effective.
3. Place Area Rugs and Mats in High-Traffic Areas
Area rugs can help protect heavily-used spots from wear and tear. Place them intentionally in areas such as in front of cash registers or front desks.
If your building is an office, use plastic mats under chairs and desks to protect the carpet from shoes, spills, rolling chair wheels and heavy furniture marks.
4. Keep Outdoor Areas Clean
The cleanliness of the grounds outside your building can significantly impact the life span of your commercial carpet.
To keep the outside of your facility in top condition, have the parking lots swept and sprayed often, and ask the grounds crew to regularly clear walkways and entrances of debris. Have rainwater runoff diverted away from the building to avoid muddiness, and place outdoor mats in front of entrances as a last line of defense.
These measures will help cut down on the amount of dirt available to get tracked indoors, protecting your carpet from abrasion.
5. Prevent Common Stains
Certain areas in commercial buildings are more prone to spills and stains than others, particularly those near sources of moisture. Using waterproof mats in front of water fountains, refrigerators, coffeemakers and sinks is a good idea. Any spilled liquids can easily be wiped off waterproof mats and won’t soil the carpet.
6. Spot Clean When Needed – But Use Care!
Ensure your business’s cleaning crew is prepared to properly spot-clean the carpet. Addressing messes immediately can help prevent stains from setting in and damaging the carpet.
Common stains, such as those from soda or coffee spills, can be cleaned with the blotting technique. This method uses a clean, white, dry cloth to soak up as much liquid as possible. Do not rub or scrub the carpet with the cloth! The heat can actually cause the stain to bond with the carpet fiber.
The appropriate spot cleaning chemical for your specific carpet type then needs to be applied as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the application of improper cleaning products often damages carpet more than the original spill.
Corporate Cleaning and Facility Services will dispatch floor care specialists to ensure proper spot cleaning.
7. Maintain Your HVAC
Your facility’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system can be an inadvertent threat to your carpet. If air ducts aren’t cleaned regularly, they can be a major source of dirt and dust within your building, which will eventually settle in the carpet.
To keep your HVAC system in clean working order, have it inspected periodically. Built-up dust and contaminants should be removed every few years, depending on the type of facility, to ensure the air circulating is clean and healthy.
8. Schedule Regular Deep Carpet Cleanings
With customers, clients, patrons, vendors and staff constantly coming and going, it’s no surprise the carpet in your commercial building can get heavily soiled in a relatively short amount of time. This is why the tips and tricks listed above work best in conjunction with regularly scheduled deep cleanings.
A deep carpet cleaning can help extend the life of your commercial carpet by keeping the fibers strong and durable. Professional cleaning methods extract ground-in dirt and debris that regular vacuuming can’t always remove.
Professional deep cleaning also improves the safety of your workplace and the health of employees and customers. Powerful carpet cleaning machines penetrate deeply to remove bacteria, germs and allergens, reducing the number of airborne pathogens in your building and providing your staff with a safer working environment.
Corporate Cleaning & Facility Services offers extraction systems services to deep clean your commercial carpet. Our proprietary methods combine hot water, neutral chemicals, agitation, suction and speed drying to produce impeccably clean carpets.
Professional Carpet Cleaning in Grand Rapids
At Corporate Cleaning and Facility Services, we understand that operating a business is hard work, and giving your workplace carpet the care it needs may not be a top priority. But we also know you care about maintaining the integrity of your office space. That’s why we provide premium commercial carpet cleaning services to facilities in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Our highly-trained technicians and professional equipment and protocols will exceed your expectations. Contact Corporate Cleaning and Facility Services today to help make your carpets last.