Free download
Room cleaning checklist
One sheet per room, five zones, and two columns to tick: stayover or checkout.
Both files are free to use, with no form to fill in and no account to open. Below: the points for each zone, how to use it day to day, and what a paper sheet won't do.
Printable A4 sheet, one room per sheet, with “cleaned by” and “checked by” lines. Excel spreadsheet to adapt the list to your property.
Room 214
Points ticked during the clean, not from memory at the end of the round.
Shower, taps and grouting cleaned. Bath linen fully changed.
Cleaned by Nadia
Tray restocked, minibar checked and consumption reported.
Cleaned by Nadia
Bedside lamp bulb burnt out, reported to the front desk.
Checked by the head housekeeper
The five zones on the sheet
The zone order follows the path through the room, from the door to the exit. A list ordered any other way means doubling back, and gets ticked badly.
Entrance and corridor
Door, handle, switches, threshold and posted notices. It's the guest's first impression, and the zone most often forgotten.
Room
Bed, floors, dust, bins, remote control, wardrobe and settings. Points marked “checkout” don't apply to a stayover.
Bathroom
Shower, sink, toilet, bath linen, amenities and drains. The zone that triggers the most complaints.
Tray and minibar
Restocking, kettle, consumption logged and best-before dates. What gets billed gets checked at this point.
Before leaving
Bulbs, smell, curtains, any issue reported, lost item logged, door closed and room status updated.
Cleaned by, checked by
The two lines at the bottom aren't decorative: it's the record of the check, the one you pull up when a guest complains the next day.
How to use it
A checklist used badly gets ticked without being read. Four habits are enough to make it actually work.
Adapt the list before printing it
Remove points that don't apply and add your own. A list that mentions a minibar in a hotel that doesn't have one teaches the team to tick without looking.
Tick as you go, never afterwards
A sheet filled in at the end of the round isn't a check any more, it's a memory. The sheet stays with the trolley, outside the room.
Stayover and checkout aren't the same thing
In a stayover room, the guest is still there: their belongings don't get moved and linen isn't changed without reason. Points marked “S” are the ones that apply in that case.
An issue goes out the same day
A burnt-out bulb noted in the margin will be found by the next guest. It becomes a ticket or gets reported to the front desk before the end of the shift, or it doesn't exist.
A lost item is logged before it's carried off
It's on the way to the front desk that an item gets forgotten. The line gets written in the room, with the room number and the exact spot it was found.
Checks cover a sample, not everything
Few head housekeepers have time to check every room. Checking a few rooms thoroughly beats checking all of them superficially, as long as which rooms get checked changes every day.
Where the paper sheet stops
This checklist genuinely helps a housekeeping team, and it beats an instruction given verbally in the morning. It has limits that show up the day housekeeping is under pressure.
- It doesn't report anything: the head housekeeper has to collect the sheets to know where the floor stands.
- A missed room only shows up at the end, once the front desk has already marked it ready.
- An issue noted on the sheet only reaches maintenance if someone copies it out.
- Nothing shows what time a room was finished, or how long it took.
- Sheets get lost, taking the record of the check with them, the one you look for three weeks later.
- A changed list has to be reprinted for everyone, and two versions always end up in circulation.
The same list, ticked from a phone
In Front Desk, the checklist gets ticked from the room, and the floor's progress shows up live, with no sheets to collect.
- The head housekeeper sees what's done, in progress and not started yet, room by room.
- A snag becomes a maintenance ticket without switching apps.
- A lost item gets logged with a photo, from the corridor.
- The list changes once and applies to the whole team that same day.
- Every room keeps a record of who did it and when.
Questions about this template
What's the difference between a stayover and a checkout clean?
A stayover is a room whose guest is staying on: the bed is made, the bathroom cleaned and supplies topped up, without touching the guest's belongings. A checkout follows a departure: the room is completely redone, linen included, and checked before it goes back on sale. The page on stayover rooms covers the procedure in detail.
How long does cleaning a room take?
It depends on the room's size, its fittings and the property's own standards: figures quoted in the trade vary a lot and none of them is a real benchmark. What the checklist gives you isn't a time, it's the same content from one room to the next and one person to the next.
Can the list of points be changed?
Yes, and it's actually recommended. The spreadsheet is built for that: add your own points, remove the ones that don't apply, reorder them to follow the real path through your rooms.
Is the template really free?
Yes, with nothing asked in return: no email address, no account to create. Print it for your team, change the points that don't match your rooms, it's yours.
The sheet is yours, and so is what comes next
Print it, it's free to use. The day collecting sheets to know where the floor stands starts to feel like a chore, Front Desk's checklists get ticked from a phone.