Janitorial cost per square foot: prices and estimates from Santa Rosa to Stockton.

Hours are what you are buying.

A janitorial price looks like a rate per square foot, but underneath it sits a simpler number: the hours a crew spends in your building each month. Every factor in this guide comes back to two questions. How long does the building take to clean properly, and what does an hour of cleaning cost in your city?

The figures here are 2026 ranges drawn from published market rates for Sonoma County and the Valley. Your building’s own number comes from a free walkthrough and the written quote we send after it.

What each service runs.

Recurring janitorial service and office cleaning are billed monthly by the square foot. On a five-night week most buildings land between $0.15 and $0.24 a foot each month. Light-use suites begin around $0.10, while a building with heavy traffic, many restrooms and a long list climbs to $0.44.

A day porter is booked by the hour, typically $33 to $45 per hour, with a simple single-floor round from $29 and a demanding post up to $54. Projects carry a per-foot price for each round of work. Carpet extraction usually runs $0.20 to $0.42 a foot per cleaning, inside a wider spread of $0.12 to $0.66. Stripping and refinishing vinyl tile runs $0.44 to $1.00 a foot with a minimum charge, from $0.34 on open, simple floors to $3.00 for small or heavily built-up areas.

Post-construction cleaning, all passes together, is a one-time $0.29 to $0.66 a foot, within an overall span of $0.22 to $1.00. Concrete scrubbing carries no standard rate. Its price comes from the walkthrough, where we measure the floor, look at its condition and agree how often it needs doing.

Four buildings, four price tags.

In Elk Grove, a 12,500-square-foot two-story office with four restrooms and one kitchen comes to $2,000 a month on a five-night schedule at $0.16 a foot.

A Rohnert Park office building of 15,000 square feet, shared by several tenants with a busy lobby and restrooms on each floor, lands nearer the top at $0.22, or $3,300 a month. Put a porter on site from eleven to three on weekdays, roughly 87 hours a month, and that daytime coverage adds $3,480 at a $40 rate, for $6,780 in all. Our side-by-side of porter and night coverage helps you decide whether a building needs both.

Out in Tracy, picture a distribution center whose cleaned area, meaning the front offices, shift breakroom, locker rooms and restrooms, adds up to 9,000 square feet. Five nights at $0.15 puts that at $1,350 a month. The warehouse floor stays off that figure, and its concrete scrubbing is priced from the walkthrough on a cycle of its own.

Projects add their own lines. A private school in Windsor that strips and refinishes 4,000 square feet of vinyl hallway over summer break at $0.60 a foot pays $2,400 for the job. A Davis church extracting 6,000 square feet of sanctuary and hall carpet at $0.28 pays $1,680 per cleaning.

How to compare two quotes.

Put the quotes on the same scope first. Each one should list the rooms, the tasks in each and how often they happen. Turn each monthly total back into a per-foot rate and set it against the figures above. A figure far under the band points to a crew spending less time inside, and that shows up first in restrooms and on floors.

Then look at what sits beside the monthly rate. Ask whether floor care, carpet extraction and porter hours are separate lines, whether restroom paper and soap are part of the price, and who checks the work. Arbor’s written quote sets out each room, its tasks, the frequency and the price, and supervisors come back to review the results. Our guide to what office cleaning includes makes a handy checklist for the comparison.