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Restroom paper supply estimator for commercial buildings
Enter the people in your building, its visitors and its open days, and the restroom paper supply estimator returns a monthly range of tissue, towels, soap and liners to order or stock.
Estimate a month of restroom supplies
Start with the facility type, then fill in how many people work in the building on a normal day, how many visitors arrive, and how many days a month it opens. Add your tissue type, how people dry their hands, whether the soap is foam or liquid, and how many restroom trash bins you have. The estimator shows the restroom visits your building sees in a month, along with a monthly range for tissue rolls, towels, soap refills and liners.
How the estimate is put together
The estimate begins with restroom visits. Staff who are in your building all day use the restroom more often than visitors who stay a short while, at rates taken from the building design defaults engineers use when they decide how many fixtures a restroom needs. Then it turns those visits into paper and soap, drawing on hand-washing observation studies and the sheet and refill sizes printed on common commercial products.
Liners follow a separate rule. They depend on how many bins you have and how many days the building opens, because each bin gets a fresh liner on every service day however busy it was.
Facility type shapes the first step. A school counts its students as people in the building, while a retail store, a bank or a restaurant sees much of its restroom use from customers passing through.
Why you get a range, not a single number
Two buildings with the same headcount can go through very different amounts of paper. Some people wash and dry their hands every time and some skip it; some pull one towel and some grab a fistful. Shift patterns, a busy lunch hour and a crowded lobby on event days all change the month. A single figure would miss most months, so the estimator gives a low end and a high end. Stock toward the middle at first, watch how fast each item moves, and adjust after the first full month.
What pushes use up
- Visitor-heavy sites. Retail floors, clinic waiting rooms, gyms and places of worship see a steady stream of people who aren’t on the payroll, and each of them is a possible restroom visit.
- Multifold towels. People tend to take extra sheets from a multifold stack, while a roll towel dispenser feeds out a set length at a time.
- Dispensers without portion control. Open tissue holders and soap pumps that can be pressed again and again let each person take as much as they like. Dispensers that release one portion at a time keep use steadier.
- Long hours. A building open evenings and weekends adds visits the weekday headcount doesn’t show, so count every open day.
If your building matches several of these, treat the high end of the range as your first order. A quiet office with roll towels and enclosed tissue holders can plan nearer the low end. Either way, the first month of real use shows where your building sits, and the reserve kept for each restroom covers the busy weeks while you find out.
What the estimate leaves out
Two items sit outside the range: toilet seat covers and sanitary bin liners. No reliable published figure tracks how quickly restrooms use either one, so we set those by watching each restroom over the first weeks of service. The estimate also covers restrooms only, not breakroom paper or kitchen bags.
Our janitorial supplies program covers every item: we stock tissue, towels, soap, seat covers and liners, load the dispensers while we clean, and hold a reserve for each restroom on the closet shelf. If you prefer, crews can work from the stock you already buy.
From estimate to a supply plan
The range is a planning starting point. At a free walkthrough Sage Commercial Cleaning counts stalls, sinks and dispensers, checks which refills each holder takes, and sets a reserve sized to each restroom. Our restroom cleaning checklist lists the restocking steps crews follow, and hard-working restrooms may also benefit from periodic restroom deep cleaning.
Use the send button under the result to add the estimate to the quote form on this page. We review it before the walkthrough, and a written quote follows. Planning the rest of the program? The janitorial scope builder lists tasks by area, the frequency planner sorts them by how often they happen, while the cleaning cost calculator prices the cleaning itself as a monthly range.
A few useful answers
Common questions.
Why does the estimator ask about visitors separately?
Staff spend the whole day in the building and use the restroom more often than a visitor who stays briefly. Counting the two groups apart keeps the estimate close to how your building really runs.
Should part-time staff be counted?
Count everyone on site on a typical day, part-time and contract staff included. For a building that runs shifts, add up the people across every shift who share the same restrooms.
Does jumbo tissue change the estimate?
Yes. A jumbo roll holds far more paper than a standard roll, so the estimate shows fewer rolls for the same number of visits. Choose the type your dispensers take.
Can Sage supply what the estimate shows?
Yes. We stock and restock restroom paper, soap and liners during routine cleaning, or deliver to buildings where your own staff fill the dispensers.
When should I run the estimate again?
Run it again when your headcount changes, opening hours stretch, or you swap towel or soap dispensers for a different style.