Dental office cleaning checklist

September 28, 2023

The Complete Dental Office Cleaning Checklist

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Maintaining a clean dental office ensures patient safety by preventing the transmission of infections or germs. But it also shows the professionalism of your dental office or clinic, which helps retain patients.A tidy and organized dental office makes your patients feel comfortable while getting a dental checkup or treatment. They perceive that you commit to giving the best dental care services and have efficient dentists to offer the services.

Their confidence in your dental practice lifts and raises your chance to acquire more patients. Wondering what assures a clean dental office? It’s the pristine waiting areas, sterile treatment rooms, hygienic restrooms, and so on.

To maintain the overall cleanliness of your dental office space, make sure you follow a comprehensive dental office cleaning checklist every time! If you have no idea what the best cleaning checklist for a dental office is, this blog will guide you. Also, read till the end to learn about the importance of dental office cleaning.

Key Essentials Needed for Cleaning a Dental Office 

Cleanliness makes an impact on your dental business by inviting more patients and retaining them. To maintain the cleanliness, you must invest in a list of essential cleaning supplies. Apart from the basic cleaning supplies, you need other supplies for deep cleaning your dental office.

Whether you clean the dental office space with the help of your daily janitors or professional cleaners, make sure you have these supplies:

  • Broom for sweeping the floors.
  • Dustpan for collecting dirt, debris, paper, wrappers, and other litter.
  • Brush for dusting furniture, upholstery, patient examination chair, and other equipment. 
  • Feather duster to wipe lights, decor, and wall fixtures. 
  • Mops for wiping and cleaning the floors.
  • Floor cleaning solution for removing sticky dirt, stains, tiles grout, and other marks. 
  • Glass window cleaner for cleaning glass doors, windows, and glass table tops.
  • All-purpose stain remover for spot cleaning.
  • Dish soap for cleaning trays, bowls, and other containers used for dental practice.
  • Sponge mop to clean and scrub the floors and a dry mop to dry them after cleaning. 
  • Bucket to carry floor cleaning solution while cleaning the floors. 
  • Baking soda for thorough scrubbing and cleaning sink tops and countertops. 
  • Disinfecting wipes to wipe the dental practice tools and sterilize them before every use.
  • Kitchen cleaners, including sink scrubbers, dusters, paper towels, and disinfectant sprays. 
  • Sponges for cleaning surfaces of tables, chairs, and other metal or glass surfaces. 
  • Trash bag for collecting the trash after cleaning and transferring it to the dumpster.
  • Wood polish or special hardwood cleaner to clean wood surfaces and make them shiny. 
  • Hand soap for cleaning hands after the cleaning process.
  • Masks and gloves for the safety of the cleaners. 

Needless to say, this is the dental office equipment cleaning checklist. You need to assemble these supplies, no matter how big or small the space is.

Key Areas To Clean In A Dental Office 

A professional and reliable dental office must look presentable and inviting to the patients. Every room and area of your office must look hygienic and unblemished. To ensure that, following a proper dental office daily cleaning checklist is necessary. You maintain a sparkling clean office where patients feel confident to walk in for treatment or checkups.  

We will mention the major cleaning tasks to include in your daily dental office cleaning checklist later. But first, you need to know the key areas to consider in the list.   

1. Clinic office’s exterior

The exterior of your dental clinic office includes the entrance, parking spaces, sidewalks, and the building itself. Cleaning the office’s exterior and making it look spotless is necessary to create an excellent first impression on the patients. 

Patients predict their experience of dental treatment at your office by what they see upon visiting it. A shabby and unclean clinic entrance or exterior will make them think your services are poor or unprofessional. Thus, make sure to keep your entrance top-notch clean to reflect your professionalism and increase the confidence of patients.

Keep the parking space free of debris, garbage, and other kinds of trash. Wipe the glass doors to make them transparent or sparkling clean. Vacuum the carpets and mats at the entrances to make them fresh and non-stinking. 

2. Reception area

Next is the reception area, which is another important area of your dental office that leaves an impression on the patients. It is where the patients make appointments, wait for checkups, and also make payments. 

The reception area should be welcoming and comfortable as patients spend a lot of time there. Include cleaning of the reception area in the daily cleaning checklist of your dental office. Do it every night, preferably after closing the clinic. 

The tasks of cleaning the reception involve sweeping the floors, wiping the doors, polishing the hardwood surfaces, dusting the furniture, etc.

3. Treatment rooms

The main area of the dental office clinic is the treatment room or rooms. You must deep clean them regularly to prevent the spread of germs and infections.
Unpleasant, unhygienic, and shabby treatment rooms can irk the patients. They can feel non-confident while getting themselves checked or treated by your dentists.

While cleaning the treatment rooms must be a priority task in your dental office cleaning checklist, ensure you do it well. Clean every corner, mop the floors, wipe and sanitize the equipment, including the electric dental chair, examination mirror, and so on. 

Take special care of the decor and fixtures in the room to ensure they are dust-free. Also, periodically, check the inventory stock for dentistry equipment such as syringes, cotton pliers, spoon excavators, tweezers, tissues, etc., and refill them. Also, spray a deodorizer or air freshener to make sure the rooms smell fresh and hygienic.

4. Restrooms

The restrooms of your dental office need equal attention as the rest areas of your clinic. Patients or their family members, staff, and dentists might need to use them. Ask your daily janitors to clean and disinfect toilet seats, sinks, countertops, and floors regularly. 

You can follow our curated checklist for restroom cleaning of commercial spaces to deep clean them. 

Wipe the mirrors and doors and disinfect the doorknobs and faucets of windows. Also, make sure to refill the basic toilet supplies, including soap, tissue paper, etc.

5. Break room

The staff and dentists of your clinic use the break room for meals and coffee time. It is also the place where they relax during breaks. Thus, it needs to be hygienic and comfortable for them. 

Even though patients will not visit or sit in this area, you need to keep it clean for the safety of the staff and dentists. There are tables, chairs, a coffee machine, a refrigerator, a microwave, etc., in the break room. 

You need to clean them regularly to get rid of food particles and liquid spills. Cleaning break rooms should be in your dental office cleaning checklist to ensure it is fresh and free of insects and pests.

Comprehensive Dental Office Cleaning Checklist: 9 Essential Steps To Follow

If you own a dental clinic or office, thoroughly cleaning up the space regularly is a necessity to attract and retain patients. 

Just like any industry, the medical field is competitive too. That is why patients’ experience matters for any healthcare clinic or service provider to have greater retention and more business.

Related: Businesses that need cleaning services too.

To take the cleaning of your clinic to the next level, here’s a complete dental office cleaning checklist for you. Ticking off each step of this dental practice cleaning checklist will ensure your space is sparkly clean and professional. 

1. Clean the floors of all rooms

The first step of the checklist to clean a dental office involves the floors. No matter how small or large the dental office is, clean floors of every area and room, including treatment rooms, reception areas, entrances, break rooms, and restrooms. 

Floors are the first thing anyone notices after stepping inside your dental clinic. Sweep them first to get rid of debris, dirt, food particles, and any litter. Mop the floors with a soapy solution and then with a disinfectant to make them spotless and germ-free.

2. Dust all surfaces

Dust over surfaces of furniture, equipment, table tops, and fixtures will make your dental clinic look unmaintained and unprofessional. Besides, they can cause the spread of germs or bacteria, making the patients prone to respiratory infections or diseases. 

Regularly dust all the surfaces in your clinic, including decor items and wall fixtures. Make sure to use a soft duster, or else you might hamper the objects or items while cleaning.

3. Clean bathrooms 

The cleanliness of your bathrooms deeply reflects the professionalism of your clinic and the quality of dental care. Moreover, unhygienic restrooms are the primary source of infections. You need to clean them regularly, including floors, toilet seats, sinks, sink tops, doors, and walls.

A necessary task at this step is to refill all the toilet supplies before they run out. Also, do not forget to disinfect the surfaces, toilet seats, sink tops, door handles, and top of the faucets. It ensures the prevention of the spread of infections or cross-contamination.

4. Organize the reception area

De-clutter and keep the reception area of your dental office organized to make the space inviting to every patient. A neat sofa or shiny table surface will make the patients and their families feel at ease. 

Regularly sweep and mop the floors to make them look polished. Dust all the furniture and surfaces and spray disinfectant over the commonly touched areas like switches, desks, and door handles

5. Disinfect equipment 

A dentist’s office has instruments and equipment required for examination, surgery, and other treatments on teeth. It is necessary to keep all the instruments and equipment clean and sterilized for the safety of patients.

Also, the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) make it mandatory for healthcare organizations to ensure the safety of employees. They recommend best practices to reduce the risk of infections to the staff and dentists. 

To clean and disinfect the equipment, we usually recommend hiring a professional cleaning company in NYC. They know the industry-specific cleaning and disinfecting processes required for maintaining the safety of the practitioners and patients.

6. Clean and disinfect commonly touched areas

Disinfecting or sterilization is a necessary protocol for cleaning a healthcare center. Thus, a cleaning checklist for dental offices must include this step. You need to regularly clean and wipe the high-touch surfaces with EPA-approved disinfectants. 

High-touch surfaces usually include door handles, reception desks, armrests, and headrests of patients’ chairs, drawer handles, cabinet knobs, switches, and X-ray room equipment.

7. Clean upholstery

Upholstery of furniture in the reception area, like chairs, sofas, or ottomans needs to look clean and fresh. It makes the space more inviting and comfortable for the patients and their family members.  

The upholstery fabrics make the furniture and your dental office look aesthetically appealing. For cleaning the upholstery, vacuum them, and then steam clean for dark spots, greasy marks, or stains. If the stains are less, you can spot-clean them using a soft wet rag and detergent.

Most of the time, upholstery items give out a foul smell due to sweat, weary clothes, food particles, water spills, etc. Thus, after cleaning, spray some deodorizer, which gives out a persistent fresh smell from the upholstery.

8. Vacuum and spot-clean carpets

Cleaning of carpets is a must-step in the dental office cleaning checklist. Carpets are laid everywhere, starting from the entrance to treatment rooms and reception areas. Dirtier carpets will certainly not leave a good impression on the patients. 

Besides, filthy carpets are breeding grounds for germs, bacteria, and molds. Carpets easily trap dirt and liquid spills and let them sit on them. This makes the carpets dirtier and causes a foul smell all around the room. 

To prevent grimy and smelly carpets from affecting the professional appeal of your dental office, vacuum and clean them regularly. To remove the dirty spots or dark stains, use natural agents, like club soda, or vinegar. If there are any greasy stains, even using a dishwashing detergent is effective.

9. Clean windows and glass panes

Lastly, include a step to clean the glass doors and window panes of your dental office clinic. It’s necessary to ensure that the glasses appear gleaming clean and elevate the aesthetic appeal of your clinic. 

Make sure to use a special glass cleaner to wipe down the doors and windows to make them spotless and shiny!

Dental Office Cleaning Checklist-Daily, Weekly, and Monthly

Now you know the crucial cleaning tasks a dental office cleaning checklist must cover. However, most commercial places follow daily, weekly, and monthly checklists for maintaining spotless business. It means you need to do certain cleaning tasks daily, some tasks frequently (once a week), and some less often (once a month). 

To make the planning for your dental office cleaning simpler, we have prepared here dental office cleaning checklist templates on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Have a look!

Dental Office Daily Cleaning Checklist  

Your dental office or clinic has patients visiting almost every day. This makes thorough cleaning of your clinic space a mandatory routine. It involves numerous large and small tasks. We recommend doing the cleaning before the clinic opens, i.e., early morning.

It ensures your office looks posh and develops a fresh ambiance before the staff and patients start pouring in. 

Follow this dental office daily cleaning checklist, whether you hire professional cleaners or let your janitorial staff do that.

1. Clean the floors

Sweep and wet mop the floors of all rooms, including reception, treatment rooms, and break rooms.

2. Dust all surfaces

Wipe down the surfaces with a soft wet cloth rag. Clean the tables, sofas, visitors’ chairs, patients’ chairs, computers, and other electronic appliances. Also, clean the X-ray examination machines, reception desks, clocks, decor, and lights.

3. Disinfect high-touch surfaces

This is a priority step of the regular cleaning checklist of any medical clinic to ensure the safety of patients. Wipe and disinfect high-touch surfaces of your dental clinic facility using proper industry-approved disinfectants. These also include cleaning the armrests, backrests, and headrests of the patient chairs, X-ray machines, cabinet drawers, door handles, sink taps, and switches.

4. Vacuum the carpets

The vacuuming of carpets is also counted among your daily cleaning tasks. Having smelly or dirty carpets turns down the visitors at any professional space. Vacuum them daily and apply detergent for spot cleaning if there are filth marks or stains anywhere.

5. Empty waste bins

It is a daily task for your janitors to empty the trash bins, which collect all types of garbage. Discard the waste into the dumpster. However, be careful while handling the bins that collect medical wastes such as syringes, cotton swabs, tissues, etc. You need to dispose of them separately in color-coded bins outside the clinic.

6. Clean windows and glass surfaces

We consider this a necessary routine cleaning task because it enriches the sophistication of the dental clinic. When the patients walk through a transparent and unblemished glass door and see windows clean and transparent, it creates a great visual impact on them. Use special glass cleaners for sparkling results.

7. Sterilize the dentistry instruments

To practice dentistry, you need many delicate instruments such as dental examination mirrors, probes, dental tweezers, pliers, dental retractors, dental explorers, chisels, and grafting instruments. It is a must to clean and sterilize these every day for the health and safety of the patients.

8. Clean bathrooms

Needless to say, cleaning the bathrooms is a regular maintenance routine. Maintaining clean bathrooms is necessary for the hygiene of the patients and staff. Bathroom cleaning includes wet mopping the floors, cleaning toilet seats and sink tops, and refilling the toiletries. Also, do not forget to empty the trash bin and replace it with a new trash liner.

9. Clean and sort the reception area

Since the reception area is the first place of interaction of patients with your clinic’s staff, make sure it looks clean and organized. An uncluttered reception area will make the patients feel welcomed and positive about their experience at your clinic. Keep papers and files sorted in drawers, neatly display the magazines, and help patients feel comfortable with clean seats or sofas. 

10. Empty the trash bins

Do not forget to empty the trash bins regularly and put new liners on them after cleaning every corner of your clinic. Dispose of the waste in particular coded bins in the dumpster.

Dental Office Weekly Cleaning Checklist 

Weekly cleaning of the dental office involves a lesser number of tasks but they are time-consuming and tedious. We advise you to do weekly cleaning of your dental office by hiring a professional team of cleaners.

Here are the weekly tasks you must do to ensure a safe and clean dental clinic space.

1. Mop and scrub the hard surfaces

It depends on the frequency of patients visiting your dental clinic. If the traffic is high, you might need to mop the hard surfaces more than once a week. But, if it has usual traffic, mopping and cleaning once is sufficient, regardless the floors are made of hardwood, tiles, or concrete. Mopping surfaces is necessary in a week to remove the dirty stains, debris, grime, and other pollutants coming with the shoes.

2. Vacuuming carpets and rugs

Keep all your carpets dust-free and odor-free by deep cleaning them once a week. While you vacuum the carpets daily, wash them once a week with shampoo or a carpet cleaning solution. Dry them completely with a steamer before placing them on the floors, and spray a deodorizer for a fresh smell.

3. Dust ceilings and wall surfaces

Ceilings and wall surfaces are often overlooked in a regular dental cleaning checklist. But make sure to include it because mild dust, molds, or cobwebs develop overnight. Gently wipe the ceilings and surfaces of the walls using a soft brush or electrostatic mop.

4. Clean and disinfect trash bins

After emptying the trash bins, you are not done! Check for dirt inside the walls of the bins, and clean them with detergent if they don’t look good. After cleaning, disinfect them to get rid of germs or pathogens. Now, put new liners in the bins.

Dental Office Monthly Cleaning Checklist

Monthly dental office cleaning tasks are the ones that you should do to maintain standard cleanliness at your clinic. However, these are too rigorous and labor-intensive tasks and might need special equipment. That’s why you need to hire a professional cleaning company in NYC to provide you with monthly cleaning tasks.

1. Clean the HVAC system

Keeping the air vents and ducts clean is essential to ensure indoor air quality is good and breathable. However, cleaning them is never your janitor’s job! Professional cleaners know the best ways to clean the HVAC system of commercial places. Hire them once a month to clean your air vents.

2. Clean and scrub the window screens

It is necessary to keep your window screens spotless and clean to ensure a natural light enters the clinic. Besides, they also protect the clinic’s interiors from pollutants and airborne particles from outside. Clean the window screens thoroughly once a month to get rid of dirt that gets trapped between the screens. The professional cleaners will take out the screens from the frame and scrub them using soap and water.

3. Clean the window blinds

Once a month you need to clean the window blinds to make them look spotless. The hired professional will dust the blinds using a soft rag and wipe them with a sponge soaked in soap water. In case, the blinds look too dirty, they may take them off the window to scrub and clean them thoroughly.

4. Wipe refrigerator and other appliances

Make sure to clean the refrigerator and other appliances using a soft cloth rag. Those often get fingerprints and dirt stains on their surfaces.

5. Check lights and other fixtures

In your monthly dental office cleaning checklist, also include the cleaning and checking of light fixtures and other wall fixtures. Those often trap dust and cobwebs, and you need to clean them often to make the walls of your dental office look tidy.

Importance of Dental Office Cleaning Services From Professionals

A bright and spotless dental office gives clues about your quality services and skills to the patients. A clean and well-maintained dental office will help improve your patients’ experience and retain them as future clients. There are many more significant benefits of having a neat and sophisticated clinic. Let’s have a look!

1. Enhance employee satisfaction

Keeping your clinic supremely clean by following the dental office cleaning checklist will help boost the satisfaction of the staff, including the dentists. They spend a maximum part of their day in the clinic. When their work environment is clean and comfortable, it boosts their morale. Eventually, that reflects on their job performance. 

Usually, a cleaner workplace keeps them happy, and they intend to give their best, which increases their productivity.

2. Retain patients

The top benefit of having a clean and organized dental office is having more patients as your repeat patients! With a top-notch clean clinic, you leave a good impression on the patients on their first visit. 

They are more likely to come back if a further dental problem arises, or they will recommend your clinic to others in need. Thus, you can do more business by maintaining a super-clean dental office!

3. Save time for other tasks

When you deep clean your dental office by hiring professionals, you save your janitors or housekeeping staff from numerous tedious tasks. As a result, they can focus on that time to do many other vital tasks, like organizing the treatment rooms, scheduling appointments, providing welcome services at the reception, and handling patients after treatment. 

In other words, by letting your housekeeping staff does miscellaneous tasks or services, you can maintain more professionalism at your clinic.

4. Enhance air quality

A professional team of cleaners follows an inclusive cleaning checklist for dental offices for daily, weekly, or monthly cleaning. Those checklists ensure unsoiled carpets, tidy upholstered furniture, fresh curtains and blinds, and a clean HVAC system in your dental clinic or office. 

This results in purified indoor air quality in your clinic, which has a positive impact on the health of patients and staff. Cleaner and better indoor air quality is also an essential condition for any medical facility to ensure the air is free of pathogens and bad odor. It makes the place breathable to the staff and patients.

5. Ensures longevity of the office space

When you clean up your dental office regularly with professional cleaners, they make sure to tidy up every nook and corner by following a checklist. They also use specific tools for cleaning treatment equipment, examination rooms, X-ray machines, etc. All these help in maintaining your dentistry equipment and office in good condition for a long time.

Get Professional Dental Office Cleaning at Sterling Cleaning Services

Maintaining a clean and hygienic dental office is necessary for maintaining aesthetics and professionalism! However, it is fundamentally important to provide safe and quality dental care to every patient and a safe working space for the clinic staff. 

Here, we have provided you with a complete dental office cleaning checklist that mentions the tasks you must do while cleaning your clinic. It serves as a valuable guide for dental clinics to ensure that their office space remains pristine clean, contamination-free, and compliant with industry regulations.

If you wish to make your dental office look supremely neat, hygienic, and welcoming to the patients, get in touch with Sterling Cleaning Services in NYC. We offer a range of commercial cleaning services to offices, retail shops, hotels, gyms, schools, hospitals, medical clinics and banks and financial institutions cleaning. To get your dental clinic cleaned up properly with this cleaning checklist for a dental office, contact our experts today!

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