How much do strip and wax floors cost per square foot?
Commercial strip and wax on vinyl composition tile (VCT) is usually priced per square foot, and public bids show a range of roughly $0.20 to $0.95 per square foot for a full strip and refinish, with the middle of the pack around $0.25 to $0.60. Small jobs under 1,000 square feet are priced as a minimum charge instead, because setup and dry time cost the same whether the room is big or small.
The clearest public data point is the Washtenaw County Road Commission’s janitorial services bid tabulation (Michigan, November 2023), which asked bidders for a separate per-square-foot price for “Strip & Refinish Tile Floors” across 2024, 2025 and 2026. The six bidders quoted:
| Bidder | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bidder 1 | $0.25 | $0.25 | $0.25 |
| Bidder 2 | $0.38 | $0.38 | $0.38 |
| Bidder 3 | $0.60 | $0.60 | $0.60 |
| Bidder 4 | $0.40 | $0.41 | $0.42 |
| Bidder 5 | $0.95 | $0.95 | $0.95 |
| Bidder 6 | $0.20 | $0.206 | $0.210 |
Those are bids on large, open government floors by companies that already clean the building nightly, which is the cheapest case. A one-off job for a dentist’s office with chairs, cabinets and a 400 square foot hallway will price several times higher per square foot, and should. Treat the bid data as the floor of the market, not the target.
For reference, the same bidders quoted carpet cleaning at $0.15 to $0.22 per square foot, bathroom deep cleans at $0.15 to $0.47 and window cleaning at $0.15 to $1.00 where it was priced per square foot. Every bidder priced strip and refinish above carpet cleaning, so it is one of the higher-value per-square-foot services a janitorial company sells, though not always the highest. The office cleaning rates guide covers nightly cleaning rates per square foot for comparison.
What moves the price up or down?
Job size, how many coats of old finish are on the floor, how much furniture has to move, how many coats of new finish the client wants, and when you can work. Each one changes the hours, and hours are most of the cost.
- Size and shape. A 20,000 square foot open corridor runs fast with an auto scrubber. Classrooms with desks, exam rooms with cabinets and corridors with alcoves are hand work at the edges. Price small rooms by the room with a minimum, not by the foot.
- Buildup. A floor that was stripped last year takes one pass of stripper. A floor with ten years of finish needs a heavy dilution, longer dwell, a second pass and black stripping pads, and the slurry takes longer to pick up. Quote after you see it, and test a corner.
- Furniture and contents. Moving and returning desks, chairs and files is billable time, and so is protecting them. Ask the client to clear the floor or price the moving.
- Number of coats. Four coats is a common commercial standard; some bids ask for five. Each coat is another pass plus dry time.
- Hours. Stripping happens when the building is empty, so most of it is evening, overnight or weekend work. Pay the premium to your crew and charge it.
- Floor type. VCT is the standard case. Sheet vinyl, linoleum, rubber and luxury vinyl tile each have their own stripper and finish rules, and some manufacturers void warranties if you strip; check the product page before you quote anything but VCT.
- Scrub and recoat instead. A floor in fair shape can be deep scrubbed and recoated with two coats at a fraction of the strip price. Offer it as the cheaper option and keep the full strip for when it is needed.
What does the strip and wax process involve?
Clear and dust mop the floor, apply diluted stripper and let it dwell, agitate with a low-speed machine and stripping pad, pick up the slurry with a wet vac, rinse until the floor is neutral, let it dry completely, then lay thin coats of finish with a flat mop, drying between coats. A strip and four coats on a typical office floor is a full shift for two people.
Manufacturer directions are the reference, and they also give you the coverage numbers you need to price chemicals. Two examples:
- Betco’s Extreme floor stripper is diluted at 10 ounces per gallon (1:12) for a light to medium strip and 25 ounces per gallon (1:5) for a heavy strip, applied liberally, left for 3 to 5 minutes of contact time while the surface stays wet, agitated with a low-speed rotary machine, auto scrubber or stripping machine, then picked up. Its stated coverage is 500 square feet per gallon of diluted solution, and it is not recommended on linoleum or sheet vinyl.
- Betco’s Hybrid floor finish lists coverage of 2,000 to 3,000 square feet per gallon and gloss readings of 85 to 90 after one coat and 97 to 98 after two. Diversey’s 4078 floor finish, as listed by Sustainable Supply, covers 2,000 to 2,500 square feet per gallon at 19% solids with a 30 minute dry time, priced at $52.96 a gallon on that listing.
Step by step
- Post wet floor signs at every entrance and block the area. OSHA’s walking-working surfaces rule, 29 CFR 1910.22, requires floors kept clean and, as far as feasible, dry, which is far easier to manage when the building is empty.
- Remove furniture and mats; dust mop; tape off carpet edges and baseboards if the finish is being changed.
- Mix stripper in cold water at the label dilution, apply with a mop to a section you can finish before it dries, and keep it wet through the dwell time.
- Agitate with a low-speed (175 rpm) machine and a black stripping pad; use a doodlebug or scraper at edges and corners.
- Pick up the slurry with a wet vac. Rinse with clean water, and rinse again; a neutralizer rinse is used with some strippers (Betco states Extreme needs no neutralization). Finish will not bond to residue.
- Let the floor dry fully. Check with a clean white cloth: any haze or stickiness means another rinse.
- Apply finish in thin, even coats with a clean flat or rayon mop, working away from the exit. Let each coat dry (about 30 minutes for the Diversey product above, longer in humid rooms) before the next. Four coats is a common commercial spec.
- Keep traffic off overnight if you can. Return furniture with protective pads under metal legs.
Wear chemical splash goggles and gloves: strippers are high-pH products (Betco lists Extreme at pH 11.8 to 12.8 in the concentrate). Never mix a stripper with any other chemical, and keep the safety data sheet with the crew.
What equipment and supplies do you need?
A low-speed floor machine with a pad driver, a wet/dry vacuum with a squeegee, two mop buckets with wringers, mop heads for stripper and separate ones for finish, stripping and scrubbing pads, a doodlebug and scraper for edges, wet floor signs, and the chemicals. A burnisher and an auto scrubber are the two upgrades that cut hours once you have steady work. Before a new cleaner runs a strip, walk them through how to use a floor buffer, including pad colors and safety, on an empty floor.
| Item | What it does | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 17 or 20 inch low-speed floor machine (175 rpm) | Agitates stripper with a black pad; scrubs with a blue or green pad | The one machine you cannot do without; buy used from a janitorial supplier if cash is tight |
| Wet/dry vacuum with front squeegee | Picks up stripper slurry and rinse water | A 16 to 20 gallon tank saves trips to the drain |
| Burnisher (1,500 rpm and up) | Restores gloss between strips; sells maintenance visits | Propane models for large floors; battery or electric indoors |
| Auto scrubber | Applies, agitates and recovers in one pass on big floors | Worth buying once large open floors are a regular part of your contracts |
| Pads, mops, buckets, doodlebug, scraper, signs, tape | Consumables and edge work | Separate mop heads for stripper and finish; never share |
| Stripper and finish | Chemicals per the coverage figures above | Buy 5 gallon pails; price per gallon drops |
Machine prices vary too much by brand, size and condition to quote here; get numbers from a janitorial supplier or auction site. What you can calculate is chemical cost per square foot, which is small. Using the manufacturer figures above, a 5,000 square foot strip at the heavy dilution needs 10 gallons of diluted stripper, which is about two gallons of concentrate; four coats of finish at 2,500 square feet per gallon is eight gallons, or about $425 at the $52.96 single-gallon price on the Diversey listing, less in pails. Chemicals land near $0.09 to $0.12 per square foot on a four-coat job, before pads and mop heads.
The cleaning business supplies list covers the everyday kit; floor machines are the one capital purchase that separates a janitorial company from a cleaning service.
How to price floor stripping and waxing: a worked quote
Price from hours, chemicals and overhead, then check the per-square-foot result against the market. Here is a 5,000 square foot office with moderate buildup, furniture already cleared, strip plus four coats, done on a Saturday. All numbers are hypothetical; swap in your own.
| Line | How it is worked out | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Labor | 2 people × 9 hours (setup, strip, two rinses, four coats with drying, cleanup) at a loaded $26/hour including weekend premium and payroll taxes | $468 |
| Chemicals and pads | About $0.11/sq ft × 5,000 sq ft | $550 |
| Equipment and vehicle | Machine wear, pads, fuel; a flat allowance per job | $80 |
| Direct cost | $1,098 | |
| Price with 20% overhead and 20% profit | $1,098 ÷ 0.60 | $1,830 |
| Per square foot | $1,830 ÷ 5,000 | $0.37 |
That lands inside the public bid range, which tells you the estimate is sane. Now stress it: if the floor turns out to have heavy buildup and the strip takes a second pass, labor becomes 2 × 12 hours and the price moves to about $2,090, or $0.42 per square foot. If the client will not clear the furniture, add the moving hours. If it is 800 square feet instead of 5,000, labor barely drops below five hours for two people because of dry time, so the same math gives about $715, close to $0.90 per square foot, and you quote it as a minimum charge rather than a rate.
Scrub and recoat is the cheaper line to offer alongside: no stripper, one deep scrub, two coats, roughly half the hours. Quoting both gives the client a choice and gives you a second sale next year.
How do you present a strip and wax quote?
Quote a fixed price for a defined scope, with the square footage, number of coats, who moves furniture, the date and hours of access, and what the floor will look like (a uniform gloss, not a mirror on a floor with cracked tiles). Include the per-square-foot rate for extra areas so additions are easy.
- State the measured square footage and how you measured it; disputes start with “I thought it was smaller.”
- List exclusions: tile replacement, carpet edges, moving items over 50 pounds, grout, and floors other than VCT unless quoted.
- Give a dry-time instruction: no traffic for a set number of hours, no furniture without pads for 24 hours.
- Offer the maintenance plan on the same page: a burnish schedule and a scrub and recoat at six months.
- Put payment terms and a cancellation window in writing, especially for weekend work you have staffed.
The cleaning estimate template and the proposal template are built for this kind of scoped, fixed-price job, and the commercial cleaning calculator handles the square-footage math for the nightly contract you are adding it to. Broombook’s quote software page shows how to send the quote and collect a deposit online.
How do you sell floor work to your janitorial accounts?
Put floor care on a calendar inside every nightly cleaning contract, priced separately from the monthly fee. Buyers already expect it: Mifflin Township’s 2026 janitorial RFP specifies floors stripped and waxed once a year and shower floors stripped and waxed four times a year as part of the scope, and the Washtenaw bid asked for strip and refinish as its own line item beside carpet and window cleaning.
The annual floor plan
- Full strip and four coats once a year, in the slow season for that building (summer for schools, December for offices).
- Scrub and recoat at the six-month mark for high-traffic areas: lobbies, corridors, break rooms, restrooms.
- Burnishing monthly or quarterly, which is quick, visible and keeps the finish from wearing through.
- Entrance matting and daily dust mopping in the nightly scope, so the finish lasts and the next strip is lighter.
How to pitch it
- Photograph the floor at the walkthrough and again after the first strip. Before-and-after photos sell the next building.
- Price the year as a schedule with a total, then offer to spread it across the monthly invoice. Facility managers like one predictable number.
- Write the frequencies into the contract renewal, the way the public RFPs do, so floor care is not a separate decision every year.
- Offer floor work to buildings you do not clean nightly; it is a low-risk way to get in the door, and the night crew that sees the building can quote the rest.
Some owners take this further and run floor care as its own company; the guide to starting a commercial floor cleaning business covers VCT, burnishing and subcontracting to janitorial firms.
Floor work also fixes a cash-flow problem: nightly contracts pay the same every month, while a strip season fills the quiet weeks with higher-margin jobs. The guide to commercial cleaning contracts covers where bids are posted and how to structure the base contract this sits on, and growing a cleaning business shows how added services change the numbers at each stage.