Floor damage in commercial buildings is more often caused by cleaning than by use. The cause is almost always a method applied to the wrong surface. Marble and natural stone are calcium-based and react with acids. Acidic cleaners, including several common toilet cleaners used out of place, etch the surface permanently. Marble requires pH-neutral cleaners, and restoration requires diamond polishing and crystallisation rather than coating. A marble lobby cleaned with an acidic product for six months will need professional restoration. Vitrified tiles are considerably more tolerant but suffer from a different problem: grout lines. The tile surface resists almost everything while the grout absorbs stains and harbours soil. Grout-specific cleaning on a periodic cycle, with sealing where appropriate, addresses what daily mopping cannot reach. Vinyl and linoleum are sensitive to solvents and to excessive water. Flooding a vinyl floor causes lifting at the seams and adhesive failure underneath. These surfaces benefit from controlled-moisture methods and periodic polish application, with stripping cycles timed to polish buildup rather than to the calendar. Carpet requires vacuuming frequency proportional to footfall, with periodic deep extraction. The most common error is over-wetting during extraction, which produces slow drying, odour and in humid conditions, microbial growth. Encapsulation methods have largely displaced hot water extraction in occupied commercial environments for this reason. Epoxy and concrete floors in parking and service areas need degreasing rather than detergent cleaning, with attention to drainage. The practical control is a documented floor map identifying surface type by area, with the approved method and chemical for each. Without it, a new team member will use whatever is in the trolley.