Short answer: weekly for kitchens and bathrooms, fortnightly for everything else, and always vacuum or sweep first.
By room
| Room | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Kitchen | Weekly, spot-clean daily |
| Bathrooms | Weekly |
| Entry and hallway | Weekly |
| Living areas | Fortnightly |
| Bedrooms with hard floors | Fortnightly to monthly |
| Laundry | Fortnightly |
The mistake that makes floors worse
Mopping without vacuuming first. A mop does not remove grit; it suspends it in water and drags it across the floor. On timber and vinyl that is a slow scratching process, and it is why some floors look progressively duller the more diligently they are mopped.
Second most common: too much water, and too much detergent. Both leave residue, residue is sticky, and sticky attracts dirt faster than clean floor does. If your floor looks dirty again two days after mopping, you are almost certainly using too much product rather than not enough.
The fix for a residue-dulled floor is a plain hot water pass with no detergent at all, repeated until the water stops going cloudy.
By floor type
Sealed timber. Damp mop, never wet. Standing water is the enemy of a timber floor. It gets into board joins and lifts the finish. Wring the mop until it feels barely damp.
Vinyl and lino. The most tolerant. Warm water, mild detergent, no abrasives or bleach.
Tile. Tolerant, but grout is not. Grout is porous and holds whatever you leave on it, so rinse properly. Grout wants a proper scrub monthly rather than more mopping.
Laminate. The least water-tolerant of all. The core swells if water reaches it and the damage is permanent. Barely-damp microfibre only.
Natural stone. Avoid anything acidic, vinegar, lemon, most bathroom cleaners will etch marble and limestone. pH-neutral cleaner only.
Two habits worth more than frequency
A doormat at every external door, and shoes off inside. Between them these remove most of what you would otherwise be mopping up, and they cost nothing ongoing.
If you are paying for cleaning, floors should be vacuumed and mopped every visit as standard, see what a regular clean includes. If floors are being mopped without vacuuming first to save time, that is worth raising.