How to Clean a Restroom: A Commercial Step-by-Step Guide

Rod Michelini is the founder of OneUp Cleaning. We sell floor scrubbers, wet vacs and touchless restroom machines, and this guide says plainly where a spray bottle and a johnny mop beat all of them.

To clean a restroom, close it with a sign, put on gloves and eye protection, and empty the trash. Apply bowl cleaner and disinfectant first so they dwell while you restock. Then work top to bottom and cleanest to dirtiest: mirrors and sinks, partitions and walls, toilets and urinals, and the floor last, mopping toward the exit.

That's the whole routine, but if a restroom you cleaned last night still smells like urine this morning, keep reading, because the fix isn't to disinfect harder.

What do you need before you clean a restroom?

Load everything onto one cart so you never leave a half-cleaned restroom to fetch a bottle. New York's restroom training manual for state custodians lists what your cart needs: glass cleaner, general purpose cleaner, bathroom cleaner, eye protection, gloves, and "Wet Floor" and "Closed for Cleaning" signs. Then add:

• Bowl cleaner and a johnny mop (a swab on a handle) for your toilets and urinals, plus a stiff brush for grout
• Microfiber cloths in at least two colors, with one color you only use on toilets and urinals
• A mop and bucket or flat mop kept for restrooms only, and a dust mop or broom
• Trash liners and refills for your toilet paper, towels and soap

Your safety gear depends on the product itself. The CDC tells you to wear the protective equipment listed in Section 8 of the product's Safety Data Sheet, and New York's manual adds a detail most crews miss: set spray bottles to a coarse stream rather than a fine mist, so you breathe in less of your chemical.

Do you need color-coded cloths?

You need at least one rule to stop cross-contamination: the cloth that touched a toilet never touches a sink. If you want a full system, the New York manual uses red for toilets and urinals, blue for mirrors and bright work, yellow for counters and green for dusting, and SC Johnson Professional's restroom procedure says to never use the same cloths on bowls and urinals as on other surfaces.

You don't have to buy the full color system. One cleaning business owner calls it an unnecessary expense outside hospitals and labs, and some custodians skip cloth on heavily soiled toilets and use paper towels they throw away. You can do the same. Either works, as long as your toilet cloth stays a toilet cloth.

How to clean a restroom, step by step

This order follows the New York manual, SC Johnson Professional's procedure and the way experienced custodians describe their routine. Your logic stays simple: clean top to bottom, dry before wet, and finish at the exit.

1. Close the restroom and pick up trash

Announce yourself, then hang your "Closed for Cleaning" sign at the entrance. Empty every bin and replace your liners, and never push trash down with your hand, since sharp objects can be hiding in the bag.

2. Apply bowl cleaner and disinfectant, then let them dwell

Squirt your bowl cleaner under the rims of every toilet and urinal. Then spray the high-touch surfaces you need to disinfect: sinks, faucets, counters, flush valves, door handles and push plates.

Now leave it alone, because a product can only disinfect if the surface stays wet for the full contact time on the label, which the CDC says you'll find in the directions and the Safety Data Sheet. Pre-clean anything with visible soil or stains first, because dirt makes it harder for disinfectants to kill germs. Pros who spray first and use the wait for other tasks say it saves them time on every room, and it will save you time too.

3. Refill supplies while the chemical works

Stock your supplies (toilet paper, paper towels, soap and seat covers) and wipe each dispenser as you go. Check the soap nozzle where it meets the sink, since that's where buildup hides.

4. Clean mirrors, sinks and counters

Spray the mirror from the bottom up, keep the spray a few inches from the edges, then wipe from the top down with a microfiber cloth and glass cleaner. Wipe your counters, faucet handles and the faucet base, and dry the chrome so you don't leave spots.

5. Wipe partitions, walls and touch points

Wipe latches, grab bars, light switches and the inside of every stall door, which the New York manual lists among the most neglected surfaces in a restroom. Wipe the tile beside and behind each toilet and urinal too, since that's where splash lands.

6. Scrub toilets and urinals

Swab inside and under the rim, then clean the seat, the outside and the base. You'll find the details in the next section.

7. Sweep, then mop toward the door

Sweep or dust mop the restroom first, so you aren't pushing hair around in wet water, and on a floor with a drain you can squeegee rinse water toward it. Then mop the edges and corners, fill in the middle with a figure-eight stroke, and back out toward the exit. Change your water when you can't see the bottom of the bucket, and never carry restroom mop water into another room.

8. Inspect before you reopen

Stand at the door and run through your checklist one more time (dispensers, mirrors, fixtures, floor and trash), and pull the sign only when the floor is dry.

How do custodians clean toilets and urinals?

Most use a johnny mop, not a rag. Here's the routine the New York manual teaches, which matches what pros describe on r/Custodians:

1. Skip the extra flushes unless a bowl is soiled.
2. Pull the urinal screen with gloved hands and set it aside.
3. Apply cleaner along the inside of the rim, including the front lip of the urinal where drips build up into yellow crust.
4. Swish and scrub the bowl and under the rim with the johnny mop, then flush.
5. Clean both sides of the seat and lid, then the outside, the base and the floor around the restroom fixture.
6. Replace the screen.

A few habits separate your clean toilet from one that only looks clean:

• Keep separate johnny mops for toilets and sinks. That's the simplest guard against cross-contamination, and custodians say they've seen too many coworkers use one mop for both.
• Keep acid bowl cleaner off the chrome. One custodian in a thread on faster toilet cleaning warns that hydrochloric acid eats through chrome and discolors plastic seats, so use it for scale on porcelain only.
• Soak what won't scrub off. Spray dried-on soil and walk away for a few minutes, and you won't need to scrub harder.

What do professionals use to clean bathrooms?

Six products cover almost every commercial restroom or public bathroom you'll clean. Here's where each one goes:

The CDC's rule applies to every one of them: do not mix products or chemicals, because mixing can be hazardous. That includes adding bleach to a bucket that already holds another cleaner.

Should you disinfect restroom floors or use a neutral cleaner?

Pros genuinely disagree here: one side mops restroom floors with a disinfectant every night, while the other uses a neutral cleaner, arguing that quat disinfectants leave a residue that makes floors tacky and pulls in dirt, and saves disinfectant for blood and vomit.

The CDC's guidance gives you a middle path. It tells you to clean first, to disinfect where people have obviously been ill, and says you may choose to disinfect in addition to cleaning in high-traffic areas. So mop your restroom floors with a neutral cleaner by default, and disinfect for spills, outbreaks and high-traffic rooms, following the label.

Why does a restroom still smell like urine after cleaning?

Because the smell isn't in the bowl; it's in the grout, the wall behind the toilet, the floor around the urinal and the floor drain, and a quick mop just wets it. The people who fixed the problem for good agree on a few moves you can copy.

Use an enzyme cleaner, and keep it away from your disinfectant. Enzyme cleaners digest the urine instead of covering it, and more than a dozen people on r/Custodians name them as the fix. The catch almost nobody mentions: a veteran equipment specialist in one thread on boys' restroom odor explains that disinfectant kills the enzymes. Clean and disinfect first, then apply the enzyme in cool water with a clean, disinfectant-free mop and let it dry on the floor.

Spray the vertical surfaces. Urine lands on the tile behind toilets, the sides of stalls and the floor under urinals. If you only mop the floor, you've only cleaned the floor.

Pour water down the floor drains. A floor drain has a trap that holds water, and once the trap dries out, sewer gas and flies come up, so a bucket of water once a week keeps your seal intact.

Scrub the grout once, properly. One custodian describes how much old urine came out of the grout the first time a scrubber went over the restroom tile. After a reset like that, your daily mop can actually keep up.

How often should a public restroom be cleaned?

At least once a day, and more often wherever restroom traffic is heavy. New York's manual calls for daily cleaning of all urinals, toilets and sinks, plus monitoring on a set schedule. The CDC tells you to clean high-touch surfaces like restroom fixtures regularly and says you may choose to clean more often in high-traffic areas.

How long should a full clean take? People who post their route standards on r/Custodians put a full clean at about 10 to 25 minutes per restroom, with busy retail restrooms taking closer to 30. One custodian, pointing to ISSA task standards, plans on 20 to 25 minutes per bathroom as a planning number. If your schedule only allows 6 minutes a room, you're restocking supplies rather than actually cleaning anything.

Restroom cleaning checklist

Print this or copy it into your cleaning log:

When is a machine faster than a mop?

For a deep clean, a machine wins. For a quick nightly clean of a small restroom, it usually doesn't.

Your mop can't pull soil out of grout lines, which is why experienced crews consistently recommend a brush on a floor machine or auto scrubber, followed by a wet vac, to reset a restroom floor. In a small restroom, a micro scrubber like the NaceCare 220NX, the Nilfisk Dryft or the Tornado Microburst fits around your toilets, and compact floor scrubbers and commercial wet dry vacuums cover your larger rooms. If you're choosing between a brush and a pad for tile, the guide to floor scrubber brush vs pad explains which one reaches the grout, and our guide to the professional tile and grout cleaning machine covers grout a brush can't bring back.

For your multi-stall restrooms, a spray-and-vacuum machine cleans fixtures, tile and floors in one pass. The guide to how touchless restroom cleaners work walks you through that routine, and the look at whether touchless restroom cleaning machines are worth it runs your labor math.

Here's the honest part: if you clean one or two single-toilet restrooms, don't buy a machine for the nightly clean. A custodian stuck with a spray-and-vac cart on single restrooms says the toilet could have been sprayed, swabbed and the sink wiped by hand in the time it takes to unwind the hoses. Save the machine for your weekly deep clean or your large restrooms.

Not sure what fits your building? Send your restroom count, stall count and floor type through our contact page or call (855) 601-5678, and you'll get a straight answer. Every order is covered by our 30-day return policy.

Frequently asked questions

What order do you clean a bathroom in?

Work top to bottom, cleanest to dirtiest, and toward the door, starting with your bowl cleaner and disinfectant so they dwell while you refill supplies. Then do mirrors, sinks, touch points, toilets and urinals, and finish with the floor.

How long does it take to clean a restroom?

Plan on 10 to 25 minutes for a full clean if you're trained, depending on the number of fixtures and how dirty the room is. Busy retail restrooms can take 30.

Can you use bleach in a public restroom?

Only on its own and only where your label allows it. Never mix it with any other product, which the CDC warns can be hazardous, and ventilate the room while you work.

Related reading: How to clean hospital floors · How touchless restroom cleaners work · Touchless restroom cleaners · Floor scrubber brush vs pad · How to use a floor scrubber