The Optus Glean promise: predictability
Three pillars. Three commitments. No exceptions.
Predictable cost. One fixed monthly fee, set against a defined scope and an annual indexed review. No variable hours. No surprise invoices. No padded callout charges. Budgeted once, paid by Direct Debit, reviewed once a year.
Predictable presence. The site is cleaned every day it is meant to be cleaned. A named primary cleaner is rostered to your contract, supported by a named relief who is already vetted, inducted, and trained on the same colour-coded system and IPC standard. The schedule does not depend on whether one person is available on one day.
Predictable freedom. A single point of accountability. One contract. One named manager. One number to call. Cleaning is no longer a problem the office has to manage — it is a service that runs.
Why cleaning in Ireland is structurally hard to get right
Most cleaning provision in Ireland — including in healthcare-adjacent settings — is delivered by a workforce that is structurally part-time and casual. A significant proportion of operatives across the sector also work as healthcare assistants in nursing homes, residential care, and acute hospitals. Cleaning shifts are typically taken when healthcare shifts are not available, and released when they are. This pattern is consistent with CSO labour data on accommodation, food, and administrative-support employment, and it is the underlying reason that buyers across Ireland encounter inconsistency from agencies they have contracted in good faith.
The pattern is reinforced by two background pressures specific to Ireland. Housing affordability limits the catchment for any role paying at or near the minimum wage. The Contract Cleaning Employment Regulation Order rate of €14.80 per hour for 2026, set under the Labour Court's sectoral employment framework, sits close enough to flexible care-sector pay that operatives drift toward whichever shift pays slightly more on the day. Both pressures pull cleaning staff away from contracted shifts and toward casual healthcare work.
The result, from the buyer's perspective, is the experience most practice managers, facilities leads, and procurement officers in Ireland describe: a clean that is half-completed when the contracted cleaner is available, missed entirely when they are not, and accompanied by recurring conversations with the agency about cover that may or may not arrive.
This is the structural problem Optus Glean is built to solve. Our operatives are fully PAYE-employed with guaranteed weekly hours, paid leave, and pension contributions under Irish auto-enrolment. They are paid above the ERO floor deliberately — because the structural reliability of the service depends on the cleaner choosing to remain in the role rather than rotating through casual healthcare shifts. A named primary cleaner is assigned to your site, supported by a named relief, both Garda-vetted and trained to Optus Glean's documented HIQA-aligned IPC standard.
The Salon Cleaning Problem
Salons are client-facing businesses where first impressions matter enormously. A client walking into a salon with hair clippings on the floor, smudged mirrors, dusty shelves, or a grubby washroom will form a negative opinion before they even sit in the chair. In the age of Google Reviews and Instagram, that opinion gets shared publicly.
Most salon owners rely on their stylists or therapists to clean up between clients and at the end of the day. The problem is that stylists are paid to style, not to clean. Their end-of-day clean is understandably quick: a sweep of the floor, a wipe of the mirrors, and a tidy of the stations. Over time, hair accumulates behind furniture, product residue builds up on surfaces, washrooms deteriorate, and the overall standard drops. The salon owner does not always notice because they see the premises every day — but new clients notice immediately.
Optus Glean provides after-hours cleaning for hair salons, beauty salons, day spas, nail bars, barbershops, and aesthetic clinics across Ireland. Our teams arrive after closing and deliver a thorough, systematic clean that your stylists simply cannot replicate in the 15 minutes before they leave for the night.
Hair Salon Cleaning Specification
Hair salons present unique cleaning challenges. Cut hair is the primary issue: it is fine, lightweight, static-charged, and embeds itself in every surface. Our hair salon cleaning protocol addresses this comprehensively.
Styling Stations and Work Areas
- Station surfaces: degreased and polished (product residue removal)
- Mirrors: streak-free cleaning front and edges
- Styling chairs: upholstery vacuumed, armrests and bases wiped
- Tool storage: hair dryer holders, styling tool hooks, product shelves dusted
- Backwash basins: bowl cleaned, headrest sanitised, surround wiped
- Trolleys and carts: all surfaces wiped and tidied
Floor Care: The Hair Challenge
Cut hair is the single biggest cleaning challenge in any hair salon. It embeds in carpet pile, wraps around brush rollers, drifts into corners, clings to upholstered surfaces, and gets tracked through the premises on shoes. Standard sweeping moves hair around without capturing it.
Our salon floor protocol uses HEPA-filtered backpack vacuums that capture even the finest hair particles without redistributing them into the air. After vacuuming, hard floors receive a microfibre mopping pass with a residue-free cleaning solution. For salons with carpet (increasingly rare but still common in waiting areas), we provide weekly extraction cleaning to remove embedded hair from the pile.
Treatment Rooms (Beauty Salons)
- Treatment beds: surface disinfected, paper roll replaced if applicable
- Trolleys and work surfaces: all products tidied, surfaces sanitised
- Magnifying lamps and equipment: wiped and positioned
- Floor: vacuumed and mopped
- Towels: collected for laundry; fresh towels distributed
- Waste: clinical and general waste separated and removed
Reception, Retail, and Washrooms
- Reception desk: wiped, screens cleaned, retail displays dusted
- Waiting area: seating vacuumed, magazines tidied, coffee table wiped
- Retail shelving: product fronts wiped, shelf edges dusted
- Washroom: full deep clean with consumable replenishment
- Staff kitchen/break room: cleaned and sanitised
- Entrance: glass doors cleaned, mat vacuumed, signage wiped
Integrated Towel Laundry
A busy salon can use 50 to 100 towels per day. Many salons still use domestic washing machines to handle this volume, which is slow, energy-intensive, and occupies valuable salon space. The towels often do not get washed at the temperatures needed to properly sanitise them, leading to lingering odours and discolouration over time.
Optus Glean provides a dedicated towel laundry service for salons. We collect soiled towels 2–3 times per week, wash at 60°C minimum to eliminate bacteria, condition to maintain softness, dry, fold, and return on schedule. The cost is €2.50–€3.00 per kg. For a salon processing 40kg of towels per week, that is approximately €100–€120 per week — less than the electricity, water, detergent, and staff time cost of running domestic machines.
Bundling towel laundry with salon cleaning saves 10–15% on the combined contract. Many of our salon clients also add washroom services (consumable supply and management) for a complete facilities package.
Salon Cleaning Pricing
| Service | Price Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Daily cleaning (small salon, 2-4 stations) | €250 – €400/month | 6 days/week, after hours |
| Daily cleaning (medium salon, 5-8 stations) | €400 – €550/month | 6 days/week, treatment rooms incl. |
| Daily cleaning (large salon/day spa) | €550 – €700/month | 8+ stations, multiple rooms |
| Towel laundry | €2.50 – €3.00/kg | 2-3 collections/week |
| Monthly deep clean | €200 – €500 | Behind furniture, high-level, grout |
Note: Prices exclusive of VAT. All pricing includes cleaning chemicals, equipment, and waste removal.
HSE Compliance for Salons
Salons in Ireland must comply with the HSE Guidelines for Infection Prevention and Control in the Personal Services Sector. These guidelines cover hand hygiene, instrument sterilisation, surface disinfection, waste disposal, and staff training. Environmental Health Officers can and do inspect salons without notice.
Optus Glean builds a cleaning schedule for each salon client that documents every surface, every cleaning frequency, and every chemical used. This schedule becomes part of your infection control documentation and is available for EHO inspection. For beauty salons and aesthetic clinics performing skin treatments, we apply higher-grade disinfection protocols to treatment rooms in line with clinical cleaning standards.
Serving Salons Across Ireland
Ireland has approximately 4,500 hair salons and over 2,000 beauty salons. From single-chair barbershops to large multi-service day spas, Optus Glean has the right cleaning package for every salon type. We serve hair salons, beauty salons, nail bars, barbershops, day spas, aesthetic clinics, and tanning salons across all 26 counties. Our after-hours scheduling means we clean when your salon is closed, so there is zero disruption to your clients or your team.
Frequently asked questions
How much does office cleaning cost in Ireland in 2026?
A corporate office is priced as a fixed monthly fee per site (or per floor, for multi-tenant buildings), tied to a defined scope and frequency. The Contract Cleaning ERO 2026 sets a €14.80/hour labour floor across the sector, but reputable providers quote the contract — multi-year term, annual indexed review, single monthly Direct Debit — not the hour. Pre-opening reset windows and out-of-hours deep cleans are inside the fee.
What standards apply to office cleaning in Ireland?
The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 obliges the employer to maintain a safe workplace, supported by the General Application Regulations 2007. The cleaning programme should produce a documented audit trail — chemical SDS, signed-off task records, training register — that supports the office manager's safety statement and ESG reporting on supply-chain labour standards.
Why is cleaning consistency such a problem in Irish office buildings?
Most Irish cleaning provision is delivered by part-time or casual operatives, frequently subcontracted from one agency to another without disclosure, often paid at or near the ERO floor with no continuity to the site. The result is a different cleaner most weeks, no real quality baseline across floors, and tenant complaints that surface six months into a 36-month contract.
What does ESG-aligned cleaning supply actually mean?
ESG-aligned cleaning means the labour in your supply chain is documented and lawful: PAYE-employed staff (not casual), paid above the Contract Cleaning ERO €14.80/hour floor, with paid leave and PRSI/pension contributions. It also means the chemical regime has SDS on file, waste streams are tracked under the Waste Management Acts, and the provider can answer a tenant or auditor question on day one. ESG is not a sticker — it is auditable supply-chain integrity.
What's the difference between PAYE and casual cleaning contracts in corporate?
A PAYE-employed cleaner is on payroll with the company that signs the contract, paid above the Contract Cleaning ERO floor, with paid leave and pension. A casual or self-employed operative is none of those things — and is often subcontracted in via a labour agency the buyer never signed with. PAYE staffing is the only model that supports a named primary cleaner per floor with continuity, and the only one that survives an ESG supply-chain audit.
How do I evaluate a cleaning provider for a multi-floor office?
Three checks. One: are the operatives PAYE-employed by the company that signs the contract, or subcontracted? Ask for a written commitment, not a tagline. Two: who is the named primary cleaner and named relief per floor or zone? Three: can the provider produce a transparent reporting pack — daily/weekly logs, audit scores, tenant feedback — that ties scope to evidence?
What should be in a cleaning contract for a corporate office?
Scope and frequencies per zone (workstations, meeting rooms, washrooms, kitchens, lift lobbies, reception), pre-opening reset window, named primary cleaner and named relief, the chemical regime with SDS, ESG and supply-chain confirmations, fixed monthly fee, annual indexed review, transparent KPIs and reporting, and a clean exit clause. No per-hour pricing. No undisclosed subcontracting.
How often should an office be professionally cleaned?
A typical corporate office runs a daily out-of-hours core clean (workstations, washrooms, kitchens, communal areas), a pre-opening morning reset where occupancy is heavy, weekly periodic tasks (high-level dusting, glass), and quarterly or six-monthly deep cleans (carpets, soft furnishings, fabric). In Ireland, multi-tenant buildings often add a midday washroom check and lift-lobby reset.
How Optus Glean handles staff shortages
Every Optus Glean contract is staffed on a redundancy model rather than a single-person model. A named primary cleaner is assigned to the site at contract start. A named relief is assigned alongside them. Both are PAYE-employed by Optus Glean, both are Garda-vetted, both are inducted on the site's specific layout, access protocols, and colour-coded equipment system, and both are trained to the same documented HIQA-aligned IPC standard. Substitution is built into the contract from the first day, not arranged on the day cover is needed.
Sick day cover. When the primary cleaner is unable to work, the named relief is deployed. The office site contact is notified by 06:30 on the morning of the absence by SMS or email, with the name of the relief who is attending. The relief follows the same task list, uses the same equipment, and finishes within the same window. The standard of clean is unchanged because the relief was prepared for this scenario before the absence happened.
Annual leave cover. Annual leave is rostered weeks in advance and the relief is scheduled to cover the full leave period. The office is informed at the start of the leave period — not on the morning leave begins. This is the same model used in clinical rota management: known absences are pre-staffed, not improvised.
Long-term cover. If the primary cleaner is absent for more than two weeks (extended illness, parental leave, bereavement leave), cover is drawn from the wider trained bench rather than relying on the single named relief. The office is kept informed of the cover plan, the named individuals involved, and the expected duration. Continuity of standard is maintained because every operative on the bench is trained to the same documented standard.
Permanent reassignment. If the primary cleaner moves to a new permanent role within Optus Glean — promotion, relocation, retirement — the relief is promoted to primary on a planned timetable, a new relief is trained on the site, and both are introduced to the office before the handover takes effect. There is no day on which the office discovers, after the fact, that their cleaner has changed.
Substitution is Optus Glean's operational problem, not the office's risk to absorb. The buyer pays a fixed monthly fee for a defined scope to be delivered, every day it is meant to be delivered. The mechanism by which we deliver it — primary, relief, bench, retraining — is our cost to manage and our risk to carry.
Last reviewed: 2026-05-06
