Give a Good First Impression of Your Facility With Clean, Well-Maintained Restrooms
A restroom solutions guide from Staples Business Advantage
Jeffrey Beland
Senior Facilities Marketing Manager
People often use the condition of a public/commercial restroom to gauge their first impression of the whole facility. In fact, Americans focus on restrooms way more than you'd think. Their various viewpoints are even curated each year in an annual handwashing survey.1 Some insights from the 2022 survey include
- Almost 60% say they're likely to spend more money at a business with clean, well-maintained restrooms.
- Eight out of 10 people think a posted and updated cleaning schedule in a restroom is important.
- The number one feature that makes them feel safer from germs in restrooms is touch-free technology, such as smart soap dispensers.
Facility managers (FMs) also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about restrooms - which makes sense, given that the word facilities happens to be one of those 300 synonyms. But there's a more likely reason why FMs ponder so much about their powder rooms. It's due to another data point revealed in that same handwashing survey:
51% say an unpleasant public restroom at a business shows poor management.1
To be clear, when they referred to "poor management," they meant the facility manager. Your restrooms are like your children: their appearance in public is a direct reflection of you.
So, it should come as no surprise to learn that when FMs were asked about their points of view on the facility management industry, the problem area that merited the greatest concern across the nation was - you guessed it - restrooms.2
In the aftermath of the pandemic, having a concern about the cleanliness of your restrooms is merely the first step to ensuring your restrooms are clean and sanitized. Many FMs have already taken the next steps.
Let's look at what they're doing - and what you should be doing if you aren't already.
#1. Increase Restroom Cleaning Frequency
According to the 2022 CMM In-House/Facility Management Benchmarking Survey Report from Cleaning and Maintenance Management magazine, 92.7% of the facility managers said they increased the number of times their staff cleaned high-touch surfaces daily.
Determining what that increase looks like for your restrooms depends on two factors:
- Square Footage of the Restroom: you can't determine how frequently you should clean until you're certain of the total surface area you must clean.
- Foot Traffic: facilities with high foot traffic, like hotels, airports and restaurants, require more frequent restroom cleaning.
The Key Takeaway: Consider increasing your restroom cleaning frequency. Let the square footage of your restrooms and foot traffic serve as your guides.
#2. Add Health and Safety Measures to Your Current Restroom Cleaning Process
In response to people returning to work during the global pandemic, FMs are also implementing additional health and safety measures (throughout their facilities and especially inside their restrooms). Hand sanitizer stations and increased disinfection and sanitation processes top the list.
Remember earlier when we mentioned touchless technology? It's the number-one feature that makes restroom users feel safer from germs. Touchless dispensers are typically battery powered, so they deliver a preset amount of soap or sanitizer with the wave of a hand. While it may be obvious that touchless dispensers can reduce germ spread, they can also enhance the image of your commercial restroom.
Installing touchless dispensers in your facility can help create a modern look in your restroom and show your guests that your business cares about their health and safety.
Some dispensers also have the Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities. IoT-enabled dispensers enable your cleaning staff to receive information about the stock levels of each dispenser, reducing the frequency of stockouts and complaints.
The Key Takeaway: Install additional health and safety measures, such as touchless soap, sanitizer and towel dispensers.
#3. Stock up on Disinfectants
The math is simple. If you increase restroom cleaning frequency and add new health and safety measures, the odds are good your facilities will need more cleaning products than the year prior. And that's exactly the case for many FMs now.
Nearly 40% of FMs reported that they increased the amount of disinfecting chemicals they purchased year over year.
The Key Takeaway: Plan to increase your line-item budget for disinfecting chemicals. The people who use your restrooms will notice - and they may even thank you for it.
#4. Control Odors
Some of the most frequent complaints FMs receive about restrooms center around odors. Before your cleaning staff can address foul smells, it's important to know where they originated. There are three main culprits:
- The Air: When people use the restroom, their natural biological functions often create odors that permeate through the air.
- The Grout: When urine hits the floor, it can get into the grout and linger.
- The Drain: Sewer odors often erupt from the drain in the restroom.
Grounding Air Odors
Manual and automatic air fresheners are effective at preventing odors by regularly releasing scents into the air. They mask any unpleasant odors before and after they occur.
Many air freshener products go beyond masking unpleasant odors. They release natural essential oils that eliminate the bacteria causing the bad smells. As such, automatic air fresheners are a wise investment for facilities looking to boost restroom cleanliness and overall hygiene.
Urinal screens offer an effective means of odour control in between restroom cleanings. They help prevent drain blockages, too. Placed directly in a urinal to trap the odour of uric salts that are present in urine, these screens are an excellent solution to odour issues when used regularly. It is recommended that urinal screens are changed every 30 days to keep your restrooms smelling clean.
Urinal mats are designed to capture and remove odors by preventing urine from puddling under urinals. In addition to improving a restroom's appearance, mats also keep them smelling fresh and clean. In fact, the most pungent restroom smells tend to come from dried urine on the floor (not from the urinal).
Shop our Expert Pick for Urinal Mats
One bonus perk to urinal mats: they can prolong the life of your restroom floors - for obvious reasons.
Routing Grout Orders
To combat grout odors, consider using an odor digester product, which is an enzyme-based (bio-enzymatic) cleaner. It contains active bacteria (the good kind) and enzymes that penetrate the grout. The enzymes break down the uric acid in the grout; the bacteria then eat it all up, like a potty Pacman.
Odor digesters can also be sprayed inside the urinals and toilets to control any odors emanating from there.
Shop our Expert Pick Odor Digester
Flushing Drain Odors
Did you know that cleaning a restroom can actually create bad odors? That's the irony of many drain-odor issues. When a restroom is being mopped, gunk sometimes falls through the drain, which can cause clogs. When the drain dries up, odor rises from the sewer pipes directly into the restroom your staff just cleaned. If you can't identify a smelly source, this is almost always the culprit.
The odor digester you used for the grout can be poured directly down the drain and will eat up any gunk that gets stuck in there.
Also, make sure your staff always keeps a quart of liquid in the bottom of the drain trap, which will also help to prevent sewer odors from rising.
The Key Takeaway: Knowing where restroom odors emanate and stocking the right products to eliminate them is the secret to minimizing restroom complaints.