In high school I cleaned houses during the summer to earn money, which has had the after-effect of a preference for design features that are easy to clean. Easy cleaning always trumps a trendy, elaborate look. I will never, ever install a chandelier in a house that I live in.
Considering how often people move in and out of apartments and how often they need to be deep cleaned because of this, I thought an article describing the design and materials of an easy-to-clean apartment would be helpful.
Flooring
Vinyl flooring takes the lead for easy maintenance. It can handle pretty much any chemical your residents decide to clean it with, doesn’t scratch easily, is resistant to water and stains, and has no grout lines. The other top choice is linoleum.
If you want to use carpet, carpet squares are an option to consider. If an area is stained, only the squares affected need to be cleaned or removed, which is an easy process, and when there is wear and tear in main walking areas, only those areas need to be replaced.
Kitchen
For any feature you install in your apartments, the simpler the design the better. For example, if you install cabinets with a lot of grooves and detailed moulding a lot of dust and food and grease will build up in the nooks and crannies. But if you choose a plain and smooth cabinet design, you can simply wipe them down and they are clean. The same idea applies to the faucets and handles you choose for your sink.
For your countertop and backsplash, granite, laminate, and engineered quartz are good options. They are easy to wipe down and the stone options only need a finish every three to five years. The undermount style sink is the easiest sink design to keep clean.
Bathroom
This is where I feel homeowners make the silliest choices when choosing look over ability to clean. It’s a bathroom - it gets gross and dirty. No matter how much you might like your initial design, if you can’t keep it clean, you’re not going to like it for long.
Limit the use of grout as much as possible. This idea applies to the kitchen, but more so in the bathroom. In the shower you can use large format porcelain tiles, stone slabs, or corian panels which can be made to look like other materials. There are also one-piece fiberglass showers. When it comes to cleaning a shower, hose shower heads are your best friend. I always prayed for these when I would clean a new house, since any other option meant I would inevitably get soaked trying to rinse the shower off with a bucket of water.
Some other tips for the bathroom - avoid using glass, install a skirted model toilet which won’t catch dust and gunk around the bottom like a traditional toilet model, and use paint formulated to resist mildew.
