Your office floor isn’t just a surface for your furniture - it’s the cornerstone of a clean, healthy, and welcoming workspace.

Every day, the street outside sneaks into your building, bringing dust, grime, pollutants and other things that don't belong. And, the effects aren't just cosmetic; they impact the health and comfort of everyone in the space.

Think about the dirt and pollutants that gather on city streets: oily residues from vehicles, bacteria from urban wildlife, and fine dust kicked up by daily activity. These contaminants hitch a ride into your office on shoes, through open doors, and via HVAC systems.

Over time, they settle into your carpets and furnishings, becoming harder to remove without the right maintenance. When ignored, these pollutants don’t just dull your floors’ appearance. They contribute to poor indoor air quality, create unpleasant odours, and wear down flooring materials faster.

But with the right strategy, you can minimise the street’s unwelcome visit and keep your office clean, fresh, and inviting. Let’s explore how to protect your workspace, starting with your first line of defence: entry matting.

The street in your office

Every step you take outside is an opportunity for dirt and debris to make its way into your workspace.

Footwear is, by far, mostly to blame for your office environment. Approximately 75% of the invading street environment consists of dry soils, which can be easily removed through vacuuming and wiping. The remaining 25% is oily and adheres to surfaces, requiring chemicals and machinery for effective removal.

What's worse, the sticky residue that's left behind attracts even more dry soils, and cannot be removed by vacuuming alone. Without regular cleaning, these soils accumulate in high-traffic areas and gradually spread further into the workspace.

Stopping dirt in its tracks

A high-quality entry mat can significantly reduce the amount of debris entering your office, trapping it at the door. However, without regular maintenance, mats lose their effectiveness, allowing pollutants to spread further into your workspace.

Your first line of defence is having effective entry matting.

The goal is to trap as much soil, debris, and pollutants as possible right at the entrance. To achieve this, consider the following features when choosing an entry mat:

• Absorbent fibres: Opt for a mat with full coverage of absorbent fibres, as they provide more contact with the shoe's base and have a greater capacity to absorb moisture and soil.
• Depth: A depth of 6 to 10mm allows for better absorption of moisture, soils, pollutants, and debris.
• Length: A length of 6 to 8 meters (7 to 8 steps) will effectively capture most of the contaminants.

Remember that ribbed matting is more suitable for construction sites to remove caked-on mud and requires brushing shoes back and forth.

Full coverage matting is a better choice for office buildings. No one is going to enter a building in the city and stand on the entry mat and brush their shoes back and forth to remove the soils, this is why the full coverage matting is more effective.

Understanding the dirt invasion in your workspace

Now that we've discussed the importance of entry matting, we must acknowledge that, while it effectively traps most soils, some remnants inevitably remain. There will always be a trace amount of outside dirt clinging to the soles of your shoes, bypassing the entry mat and making its way into your workspace.

In most city buildings, once you're past the entry mat, you traverse the foyer and ascend the lifts on hard surfaces like stone flooring. These surfaces offer no absorbency or concealment for the residual dirt.

Next, you encounter the carpeted workspace, chosen for its comfort, acoustic value, and aesthetic appeal. Most importantly, however, it possesses the crucial ability to absorb and hide soils.

Consider an average building with between 2,000 and 7,000 daily occupants. Some will arrive by car or bike, but the majority will use public transport—typically the main culprits for tracking dirt into the building. If we estimate that around 70% of occupants use public transport, that leaves us with 1,500 to 5,000 commuters introducing dirt into the workspace each day. Factoring in at least one exit and re-entry per person—for a coffee break or lunch—we're looking at 6,000 to 20,000 dirt-laden shoes reentering the building daily. That adds up to an average of 30,000 to 100,000 potentially dirty footfalls each week.

This constant foot traffic, even with a small amount of dirt on each shoe, results in a significant buildup over time. Dry and loose dirt can be vacuumed out daily using an upright brush head vacuum. However, oily soils stick to the carpet fibres, attracting dry soils that then resist vacuuming.

If the carpet is not cleaned regularly, these soils will continue to saturate the fibres until they can't absorb any more dirt. The excess dirt then spreads further into the workspace, saturating fresh carpet fibres and creating what we call "sheep track" wear areas in high-traffic zones.

Many buildings schedule mechanical carpet cleaning semi-annually or annually to remove these soils. However, this interval allows the oily, gritty soils plenty of time to pollute and cause significant wear and tear to your workspace carpet.

The art of targeted cleaning

If you're staring at your workspace carpet, recognising the 'sheep track' wear areas we discussed previously, your carpet is now in what we could call 'damage mode.' The soils have been well-tracked in, and the dry, gritty soils have bonded with oily residues. As traffic flows each day, this dry grit abrasively impacts and further damages your carpet fibres.

The solution isn't necessarily a full carpet clean; rather, it involves frequent cleaning of only the soiled areas. Let's outline a basic, cost-effective carpet maintenance plan designed to extend the carpet life, foster a healthier environment, and improve aesthetics:

• 5% of your carpet encompasses the entry area, the point of transition from hard floors.
• 15% of the carpet covers primary traffic areas.
• 50% of the carpet is located within workstations, offices, and meeting room areas.
• The remaining 30% lies beneath furniture or in areas that are rarely walked on.

Following this breakdown, the cleaning plan would be:

• Clean the 5% entry area six times annually, accounting for 30% of the total carpet.
• Clean the 15% primary traffic areas four times annually, representing 60% of the total carpet.
• Clean the 50% workstation and office areas twice annually, covering 100% of the total carpet.

In total, you would be cleaning 190% of your carpet annually, which equates to slightly less than two full cleans annually.

Considering that the carpet in a building represents a significant investment, it is important for owners and occupants to extract the most value from it. Moreover, a clean, appealing floor contributes to a healthier, happier workspace.

To wrap up this series on minimising outdoor influences on our indoor spaces, I want to revisit some key points:

• Correct entrance matting with full fibre coverage, the right depth for soil absorption, and appropriate length for maximum soil removal from footwear.
• Frequent vacuuming and cleaning of entrance matting.
• Implementation of the right carpet maintenance plan to prevent soils from damaging your carpet asset and contribute to a healthier, more appealing workspace.

If you've put these principles into practice, congratulations! You are now effectively minimising the street's intrusion into your office.