A plain blue background.

Color Coded Cleaning

What is a Color-Coded Cleaning System?

At Sanitizing Pros, we follow a professional color-coded cleaning system that assigns specific cloths, tools, and mops to designated areas. This system prevents cross-contamination, ensures compliance with health regulations, and increases efficiency across commercial and medical spaces.

Color-coded system showing contamination risk levels for cleaning different surfaces. Red indicates high risk for bathroom areas like toilets and urinals, blue for general lower risk areas excluding food areas, green for food processing surfaces like general food and bar use, and yellow for multi-surfaces such as washbasins, sinks, and cabinets. A gradient bar at the top shows contamination risk from high to low.
Two people in full protective hazmat suits, masks, gloves, and shoe covers disinfecting stairs with spray bottles.

Why It Matters

  • Reduces the risk of spreading germs from restrooms to desks or kitchens

  • Increases hygiene in high-risk areas like bathrooms and healthcare facilities

  • Supports OSHA, CDC, and EPA best practices

  • Helps ensure quality control among staff

  • Provides visual clarity and accountability during service

The Four Coded Colors

There are four colors in the Sanitizing Pros color scheme: red, blue, yellow and green. The chart below shows which janitorial areas each of the colors correspond to:

  • Red is a color that is universally associated with risk and hazards.  We assign this red color code to areas such as urinals, toilets and washroom floors. Our reason is that these areas pose a high-risk of bacterial contamination. By using only red-coded cleaning products like cloths, mops, buckets and gloves to clean in high risk areas, the risk of spreading bacteria outside of these areas is minimized.

  • The yellow color code is associated with lower risk within high risk areas, and will be used on all other washroom surfaces, including sinks, mirrors, cubicles, tiled walls, glass and metal. Two different color codes for high risk areas such as washrooms ensures that the same cleaning products are not used, for example, cloths used on toilet seats and bowls will not be used on sinks and faucets. This helps to further prevent the spread of infection.

  • The color green is assigned to food & drink preparation areas, including kitchens and bars, but green is also used in other areas such as factories where food is processed.  The exposure of uncooked meat and fish on surfaces and utensils will pose a particularly high risk in terms of cross-contamination. Therefore, it is vital to regulate the use of cleaning equipment and cleaning products in these areas.

  • The color blue has been coded for lower-risk areas. These areas include offices and classroom desk tops, window ledges, hallways, and are used for general dusting and polishing.  These areas usually have a lower risk of bacterial contamination than in other areas like washrooms or kitchens.  Blue coded cleaning equipment and products can be used across a broad range of surfaces.