Offices and commercial premises have a lot more furniture in them than just desks. Think of all the communal areas, the lunch and break room, lobbies and waiting rooms… Then think of all the seating, the tables – and the beanbags, if you’re on the cool side of office life.
All of this stuff needs cleaning, too.
It’s easy enough wiping down a table after lunch and clearing a seat of crumbs, but what about sofas and beanbags? What about armchairs and soft furnishings?
We’ve covered how to clean office desks and cleaning for office chairs – but now it’s time to explore the softer side of commercial furniture cleaning.
Sofas – in waiting areas and communal spaces
The sofas in your waiting area are one of the first things your clients and visitors see. Think of them not so much as a sofa, but as a first impression.
You won’t make a good first impression with a crumb-covered, stained and smelly sofa! And even if nobody eats or drinks on them, sofas accumulate dust over time (plus the mites and bacteria that come with it), and can absorb smells. Regular cleaning keeps them inviting to sit on – and creates a welcoming atmosphere for everyone in your office.
Cleaning sofas in commercial environments does involve a few stages, probably more so than in a home setting, owing to the increased use. But the results are worth it: clean, fresh seating that’ll last longer and improve your workspace.
How to clean office sofas and armchairs
Vacuuming
You should aim to hoover your office sofas and armchairs of crumbs and dust one per week, or more often in break rooms and quiet areas that are used for lunch and snack times. Use a vacuum cleaner with an upholstery attachment – usually, these are narrow heads that have brushes on them, for loosening caked on bits.
Remove the cushions, seats, and backs – and vacuum the entire surface, paying special attention to those crevices and seams where dirt and debris accumulate. Hoover the cushions, seats and backs, too, flipping to opposite sides if possible. This helps the padding and covers wear more evenly.
Spot cleaning
After the essential hoovering is done, check the sofa for stains. If you find any, use a mild detergent mixed with water (to avoid further damage, consult the manufacturer’s cleaning guides – and always test cleaning supplies on a hidden area first!).
Blot the stain with a clean cloth dipped in a suitable cleaning solution. Avoid rubbing, as this can spread stains further.
If that doesn’t work, you might need to look for specialist cleaning services; if the cover is removable, you might be able to take it to a dry cleaner – and if not… Well, maybe a nice throw or some extra cushions will help hide the stain. You could get the sofa reupholstered if it was particularly bad.
Deep cleans for office sofas
Every six months to a year, you should aim to deep clean your office’s soft furnishings. A professional commercial cleaning service is recommended for deep cleaning – with steam cleaners or hot water extraction methods. These effectively remove dirt and allergens from deep within the fabric and padding, which can stop odours as well. In the short term, if smells are an issue you could try sprinkling baking soda on the sofa, then letting it sit for 15 minutes before hoovering it all up. This can go a good way to absorbing odours and getting the sofa feeling fresh again. It can even help with staining!
If you have cushions or other soft furnishings on your sofas and armchairs, we’d advise removing the covers and washing them as per the instructions on the fabric label during a deep clean.
Beanbags
Ah, there’s no place like a beanbag for a productivity sprint, or a lazy lunch spent scrolling through social media!
If you have beanbags and lounge furniture for less formal parts of the office, then you should keep on top of their cleaning schedule, too. Although not client-facing, your team will appreciate having clean furniture – which will keep them healthy and productive.
Now, while very comfortable and great for lounging with a laptop, beanbags are notoriously hard to clean. You can’t easily vacuum one, and dabbing stains out isn’t very effective.
Removing the covers and washing them is the only real way… but this can be problematic because of all the beans (well, polystyrene balls, usually). Thankfully, most bean bags these days have an inner bag and outer cover – making removal for washing super simple. But there’s a chance yours doesn’t have this feature, especially if it’s a more economical piece of furniture.
One way of dealing with this is to source a duvet cover – one that’s big enough to fit the whole beanbag in – and opening the bean bag inside it. Tip out the contents, being extremely careful not to let any of it get out of the duvet cover. Once you’ve picked out any straggling beans, you can take the cover to wash and dry as per the instructions, or on a mild wash if there aren’t any.
To make life easier for the next time you need to clean your beanbags, the duvet cover can be used as an inner bag from now on – folded over itself to seal the beans in. You can now slip the outer cover on and off whenever you need to, without having to worry about escaping beans.
Hopefully, these ideas have given you a starting point to work from for cleaning your soft pieces of office furniture – but if you’d prefer to leave it to the professionals, get in touch with us.
Professional Commercial Cleaning Services
Get professional commercial cleaning from The Abbey Cleaning Service. Call 029 2067 9323 today, and find out how we’ll help get your office furniture clean.
