Cleaning a Classic Lobby

Extra care has always been put into designing the lobby of a building. Many of the office and residential buildings all across New York City, especially those designed during the Art Deco era, have opulent lobbies with high ceilings, ornate chandeliers, and marble floors and fixtures that have a bright, reflective shine.

Unfortunately, the Law of Entropy doesn’t let anything escape its grasp and many of these classically designed lobbies and buildings have lost much of their shine and appeal due to the lack and perceived cost of the appropriate upkeep. The truth is there is no reason that these old marble floors cannot be brought back to their original shine with regular and basic maintenance.

If your lobby has been neglected over the years there is a possibility that significant part of the floors, fixtures and lighting are damaged, potentially beyond what basic cleaning and servicing can overcome. If your lobby is in need of specialized repairs, your best bet is to call a professional restoration service to fix the damage holding you back from bringing your lobby back to its original glory.

Short of major repairs, the brilliance of the design is still there probably trapped under decades of foot traffic and varnish. While it may take some time and effort to get that shine to come through, we can guarantee that it will be worth it.

The first thing you have to do is take a step back and take in the big picture of how your lobby was designed. If you look at it from a new and different angle, you will notice that every small detail is part of a much grander plan. You may not realize it, but the placement and angle of the lighting was designed to provide light, but also to highlight the details and features of the floors, elevators and designs on the walls, floors and even the ceiling.

Lighting is also a design feature with uplighting giving a sensation of height and grandeur, even if it is an illusion created by the angle of the lighting.

Buffer or Burnisher

 A floor buffer is used to clean and shine a hard surface floor. Floor buffers are mainly used for removing common stains, however, for high traffic areas and for floors that have not been properly cleaned, a floor burnisher may be necessary to bring back the original shine. A floor burnisher is a machine or tool that can be used for stripping or waxing floors. It may also produce the same result as using a floor buffer, but there are major differences between the two. A floor burnisher uses steam to provide high-powered cleaning so it does not leave behind any of the residues which are common with floor buffers.

It is also important to note that a burnisher is not for every surface as it can actually damage more fragile surfaces.

Since a burnisher uses steam, it is also environmentally friendly.

Lobby fixtures, especially those from the Art Deco era, have a lot of detail, and are made from a wide variety of materials including Stainless steel, mirror and chrome, glass, lacquer, and even bronze. 

Colors were also a big part of the art deco period, and they were quite striking and bold. Colors are often paired or punctuated with high-shine silver, chrome, or black accents. Favorite colors of the era include bright and deep yellows, reds, greens, blues, and pinks.

Cleaning these fixtures and other design elements could be done using many of the green cleaning supplies that we have available. If there is a large amount of tarnish, it may take some extra work, but the original shine is there waiting to come back out.

A grand lobby elevates the look and feel of any building and short of any major damage, bringing the original look and feel of your lobby out is a matter of having the right supplies and putting in the time and effort.