Guide
What commercial floor care costs, surface by surface
Floor care is priced by the square foot, and each surface in a building carries its own rate. This guide sets out typical figures for carpet extraction, hard floor refinishing and exterior pressure washing from the Central Valley to the Bay Area, works through three sample properties and shows how to read a floor care quote line by line.
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How to read the price bands
Every rate on this page reflects 2026 published market data for floor care in Northern and Central California, and each one shows where a floor care budget usually lands.
The bands are wide by design: open floors in fair condition sit near the bottom, crowded or neglected rooms near the top, and most commercial jobs in the typical span between.
Carpet cleaning cost per square foot
Commercial hot water extraction typically runs $0.19 to $0.44 per square foot for each cleaning. The floor of the band, about $0.11, belongs to big open-plan areas with light soil. The ceiling, near $0.70, is reserved for cramped rooms full of furniture and for lanes that have gone a long stretch between cleanings.
Interim extraction of lanes and entrances is priced on the square footage it covers, so a quarterly lane cleaning costs a fraction of a full-floor job. Setting the right mix of interim and full cleanings is covered in the office carpet guide. Yearly carpet budgets by cleaning frequency are worked through in the commercial carpet cleaning cost guide.
Hard floor refinishing and pressure washing
Stripping and refinishing resilient or VCT-type flooring typically costs $0.42 to $1.00 a square foot, and every job carries a minimum charge. A large, simple floor with light build-up starts around $0.33. Small, detailed areas, or floors buried under many layers of yellowed finish, climb as high as $3.00 per square foot.
Routine scrubbing, burnishing and recoating are lighter work than a full refinish and are priced from the walkthrough by area and frequency. Concrete scrubbing is priced the same way, from the zones to be cleaned, the coating, the soil and the hours the floor stands clear. The differences between those processes are set out in the floor cleaning methods guide.
Outside, commercial pressure washing of walkways, entries and plazas generally runs $0.17 to $0.47 per sq ft. Open concrete with light staining starts near $0.11, and gum-spotted, detailed or hard-to-reach surfaces reach about $1.00. Minimum charges and sample refinishing budgets get their own page in the floor stripping and waxing cost guide, and exterior work has the pressure washing cost guide.
Three worked examples
A Fresno office with 15,000 square feet of carpet, extracted twice a year. Fresno carpet pricing typically falls between $0.19 and $0.38 a foot. At $0.24, each cleaning comes to $3,600, and the two visits total $7,200 for the year.
A 5,000-square-foot carpeted suite in San Francisco on a quarterly extraction schedule. San Francisco carries the top of the region’s carpet band, typically $0.22 to $0.44. At $0.40, each visit is $2,000, or $8,000 across four visits a year.
A Roseville retail building with 6,000 square feet of VCT stripped and refinished once a year, plus 8,000 square feet of storefront walkway pressure washed. At $0.55 for the refinish, the floor comes to $3,300. At $0.25 for the walkway, the exterior adds $2,000.
What moves the price
Soil depth comes first. Carpet that has gone a long stretch without extraction needs pre-treatment and slower passes, and a finish with many layers of build-up takes extra stripper and labor to remove. Floors kept on a steady schedule clean faster at every visit, which holds their per-foot rate toward the lower part of the band.
The room itself comes next. Furniture to move, cubicle panels that break carpet into small sections, fixtures to work around and short closing windows all add time. Drying and curing shape the booking: extraction needs the room empty until the carpet dries, and new finish needs the area closed until it cures, which often means night or weekend work.
How prices change from city to city
Labor is the largest part of floor care, so local labor costs move the rates. Fresno, Clovis, Bakersfield and Visalia sit at the bottom of the region’s bands, with office carpet extraction typically $0.19 to $0.39 a square foot, just under the Sacramento-area cities. San Francisco sits at the top, at $0.22 to $0.44, with Sunnyvale, Berkeley and Santa Clara right alongside it.
Sacramento, Roseville, Elk Grove, Stockton and Modesto land mid-range, with carpet extraction at about $0.20 to $0.40, and San Jose, Oakland, Fremont, Hayward, Vallejo, Santa Rosa and Salinas sit just below the top of the region.
Reading and comparing floor care quotes
A useful floor care quote lists each surface on its own line: the square footage, the process, the rate and how often it happens. With that detail, two quotes can be compared fairly. When one shows a single lump sum for floor care, ask for the areas and processes behind it.
Check that the quotes describe the same work. A scrub and recoat and a full strip and wax are different jobs at different rates, and extracting every carpeted room is a different job from extracting lanes and entries. Compare frequency too: four quarterly cleanings and one annual cleaning produce very different results on a busy floor.
Then look at how the number was reached. Solum Cleaning prices from a walkthrough of the floors themselves, assesses the material and finish before recommending treatment, and confirms price and scheduling before service. One inquiry covers carpet, hard floors and exterior surfaces, across one property or several.
A few useful answers
Quick answers.
How much does commercial carpet cleaning cost per square foot?
About $0.19 to $0.44 a square foot per cleaning; the carpet cleaning cost guide turns that rate into yearly budgets.
Why does a small floor job cost more per square foot?
Setup, materials and drying or curing time barely shrink with the floor, so a small refinish usually falls under the job minimum rather than the per-foot rate.
Is pressure washing priced the same way as interior floor care?
It is also priced by the square foot, typically $0.17 to $0.47, with stains, gum and access moving each surface up or down the band.
How is concrete scrubbing priced?
By the square foot of the zones that need scrubbing, or by the machine hour on very large or irregular floors. The coating, the type of soil and the hours the floor stands clear set the rate, and each job is priced from a walkthrough.
How can a property keep floor care costs steady from year to year?
Keep each floor on a regular schedule. Carpet extracted before soil builds up and finish recoated before it wears through both clean faster at every visit.
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