Floor surfaces can vary enormously. In fact, it would be fair to say that no two floor surfaces are exactly the same, even though they may be made of identical material. This is in much the same way that no two cars are the same. They may have been identical when they left the factory, but the way in which they have been driven, the mileage that they have covered, the amount of servicing that they have had, the cleaning they have undergone, and the general way they have been cared for means that after six months those cars may be completely different. They may even still look the same, but under the bonnet things will be different.

The same applies to floor surfaces. The amount of foot traffic will cause wear over time. There may be considerably more foot traffic on one part of a floor than another. Take a department store, for instance. There will be the maximum amount of foot traffic inside the entrance door, but then that traffic splits up and goes to different departments, so the bedding department on the third floor will have a lot less traffic than inside the door, because not everyone goes to the bedding department. As a result, the bedding department floor will receive a lot less wear.

Another thing that affects the condition of floor surfaces is how well and how often they are cleaned. All floors should be cleaned regularly, but the fact is that an awful lot of floors are not. This can result in a build-up of dirt, and again the entrance door area will suffer most because it has maximum traffic and that traffic can bring in dirt, mud, rainwater, and so on along with it. The bedding department will not suffer nearly so badly, even during bad weather, because by the time that (lower amount) of foot traffic has reached it a lot of the dirt, rain, etc., will have been shaken off people's shoes. That doesn't mean that the bedding department floor should not be cleaned, but it may not need to be cleaned so often as the ground floor.

Of course, another thing that can affect floor safety is spills. There may be spills of many different types, depending on the use to which the building is put. An engineering workshop will suffer from oil and grease, in many instances quite considerably because a lot of the machines use oil in order to run smoothly. A food service area can suffer from all sorts of different spills ranging from milk and soft drinks, to meat, gravy, fruit juice, wines and beers, and a considerable lot more. The problem is that spills may often go unnoticed, or they may be noticed but not cleared up because perhaps someone who did spot a spill thought to him or herself "that's not my job". Even if it was not their job it should have been reported so that it can be cleared up by whoever's job it is.

One big problem concerning floor surfaces is that very often nobody really thinks about them. There may be a regular cleaning regime in place, so the manager thinks that the floor is taken care of and doesn't worry about it. Indeed, it may look perfectly all right but could still be dangerous. The only way to find out is to have a slip test carried out. Slip testing is carried out using a small portable piece of equipment and measures the slipperiness of floors, marking them on a sliding scale. If the floor surface falls below the acceptable level it can be treated using an anti-slip product. There are several different types, and which is used will depend on the particular floor surface involved.

Whatever type of floor surface you have, you should have floor deep cleaning carried out once a year. This is best carried out by a professional who will have the right sort of machinery and the correct cleaning products, combined with the expertise to bring any floor surface up to a perfect finish. When you have a lot of foot traffic, deep cleaning the floor can make an astonishing difference even though the floor looked "all right".