Janitorial and commercial cleaning leads in Washington

Seattle's commercial core runs from downtown through South Lake Union, where Amazon's headquarters campus and a large biotech and research cluster sit, up to the University of Washington and its medical center. Across Lake Washington, Bellevue has grown into a second downtown of office towers, and Redmond holds Microsoft's main campus. These are big buildings with big cleaning contracts, but they are surrounded by a far larger number of smaller offices, clinics, dental practices and shops that buy cleaning on their own.

North and south of Seattle, the picture changes. Everett has Boeing's widebody assembly plant and Naval Station Everett. The Kent Valley, between Seattle and Tacoma, is one of the largest warehouse and distribution areas on the West Coast, and the Port of Tacoma and Joint Base Lewis-McChord add industrial, military and contractor buildings to Pierce County. Olympia brings state government, and Vancouver, across the Columbia from Portland, has its own growing office and medical market.

East of the Cascades, Spokane is the regional center for medical care, higher education and government, with Fairchild Air Force Base to the west of the city. The Tri-Cities are shaped by the Hanford Site cleanup and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the Yakima and Wenatchee valleys run on fruit packing and agriculture. Most cleaning companies here build their route on one side of the mountains and stay there.

What changes through the year

Western Washington's long rainy season, from fall into spring, means wet entrances, muddy parking lots and a steady need for carpet extraction and walk-off mats. Late summer can bring wildfire smoke from both sides of the Cascades, which loads HVAC filters and leaves dust on surfaces. East of the mountains, winters are colder with more snow and salt. The fruit harvest keeps packing houses in Yakima and Wenatchee running hard from summer through fall.