How much does floor stripping and waxing cost?

Commercial floor stripping and waxing usually lands somewhere between fifty cents and three dollars a square foot, and the spread is wide for good reasons. Two buildings with the same square footage can get very different quotes because the work behind the number is different.

Start with the published ranges and the drivers behind a quote. Then the number that matters more: what a floor costs you per year, not per strip. A list for your quote request closes it out.

What published guides say it costs

Third-party cost guides put the job at roughly $0.50 to $3.00 per square foot. These are industry figures, not our rates, and they are useful only as a sanity check.

Two things explain the gap between the low and high figures. Contract janitorial pricing assumes a large, repeat floor on a maintenance schedule. Consumer cost sites blend in small one-off jobs where the minimum charge does most of the work. A 600-square-foot break room priced at a $400 minimum works out to about 67 cents a square foot. The same rate would never apply to 30,000 square feet of corridor.

Use the ranges like a cost calculator: to spot a quote far outside the band and ask why.

What moves the price on your floor

Labor is most of the cost, so anything that adds hours or adds a night moves the number.

The cost that matters is per year, not per strip

The strip is only one line in what your floors cost each year. What matters is the twelve-month spend to keep the floor looking right, and the schedule between strips sets that.

A full strip removes all the finish down to bare tile, then lays three or more fresh coats. Scrub and recoat is lighter: the crew scrubs off the top, worn layer of finish with a less aggressive pad, rinses, and lays one or two new coats. No stripper, no bare tile, fewer coats, less dry time. Burnishing is lighter still, a high-speed pass that brings the gloss back on finish that is still sound.

Maintained this way, a floor that would otherwise need a strip every few months can often go a year or more. The strip quote may look the same either way. The yearly spend does not.

Ask for floor work as scheduled periodic lines next to the nightly janitorial scope, rather than a one-off project every time the corridor dulls. Our commercial floor care page shows how those cycles are laid out.

What goes wrong between strips (and costs you a strip early)

Most finish failures start on ordinary nights, long after the floor crew has left. The usual handover problems:

• The wrong mopping chemical. Strong alkaline cleaners and degreasers soften floor finish. If the nightly crew mops the corridor with the same product they use on the kitchen floor, the gloss fades in weeks. Nightly mopping on finished tile should use a neutral cleaner.
• Mopping too soon. Finish keeps curing after it feels dry. Heavy carts, wet mopping, or burnishing too early can scuff or haze it. The finish label states the wait; the floor crew should leave that note with your nightly crew and with you.
• No walk-off matting. Grit tracked in from the parking lot acts like sandpaper on the first 20 feet of floor. Mats at the entries do more for finish life than an extra coat.
• Chairs and carts. Bare chair legs and hard cart wheels cut lines into fresh finish. Felt glides and checked casters are cheap.
• Two vendors, no owner. If one company mops nightly and another strips twice a year, nobody owns the condition of the floor in between. Each blames the other when it dulls.

When the same contractor runs the nightly scope, any day porter hours, and the periodic floor work, the person responsible for the finish is also the person mopping it.

How long it takes, and how to schedule around your building

Most strip and refinish work happens at night or on weekends because the floor is out of use until the last coat is dry.

The sequence is fixed: move furniture, dust mop, apply stripper and let it dwell, scrub, pick up the slurry, rinse, dry, then lay coats of finish with drying time between each. Humidity changes dry times, and no crew can rush the last half of the night.

For a building that stays open on weekdays, plan by zone:

1. Pick the zones (for example, east corridor, lobby, break room).
2. Give each zone its own night, with a clear finish time before staff arrive.
3. Agree on how traffic reroutes around wet areas and who puts the signs out.
4. Walk each zone with the floor crew's supervisor the next morning, before staff fill it.

Medical suites, schools, and retail floors have their own constraints on when areas can close. Our medical office cleaning page shows how that fits around patient hours.

What to put in your floor care quote request

Copy this into your email or RFP so every bidder prices the same job:

• Floor types and approximate square footage by area (VCT corridor, sheet vinyl break room, terrazzo lobby).
• Current condition, with photos of the worst spots.
• Number of coats of finish expected after a strip, and whether a sealer coat is included.
• Who moves furniture and equipment, and what stays in place.
• The nights and hours each zone is available, and the time it must be back in use.
• How many strips, scrub-and-recoat visits, and burnishing visits per year, each as its own line.
• The neutral cleaner the nightly crew will use on finished floors.
• Minimum charge, if any, and the price for adding an area later.

Ask for each floor service priced as a separate line with a frequency. That way you can see what happens to the yearly total if you move a strip from twice a year to once and add two recoats instead. Our commercial cleaning cost guide covers how the rest of the contract is priced, and our office cleaning services page shows how floor work fits the nightly scope.

Price the year, not the strip

Bring your last two floor invoices to the walkthrough. We check each floor type and the state of the finish, and you can ask for burnishing, recoats and strips as separate lines so the twelve-month total sits next to your nightly cleaning price. Book a free facility assessment or call (202) 968-1190.