Knowledge Base

Colour-Coded Cleaning System Guide

Colour coding is one of the simplest ways to make a cleaning system easier to understand and follow. By assigning particular colours to defined areas, tasks, production zones or ingredients, businesses can make it immediately clearer where cleaning tools belong and where they should be used.

This is particularly valuable in food production and other hygiene-critical environments where cleaning equipment moving between different areas can create a cross-contamination risk. The Food Standards Agency specifically recommends separate cleaning materials for areas in which different food risks are handled.

What is a colour-coded cleaning system?

A colour-coded cleaning system assigns colours to cleaning tools according to rules set by the individual site. For example, a business could allocate one colour to a high-care production area and another colour to external or lower-risk areas. Another facility may use colours to distinguish between allergen and non-allergen production. The important point is that the colour has a clear meaning within your facility and that everybody understands it.

Is there a standard cleaning colour code?

This is an important distinction.

There is no single universal colour allocation that every food production facility must follow. Red does not legally have to mean one particular task, nor does blue automatically mean another. Different businesses face different hazards, layouts, ingredients and production processes.

Your colour system should therefore be based on the risks identified within your own site and food safety procedures.

A simple system that employees understand is usually more useful than a complicated one involving too many exceptions.

What can cleaning colours be used for?

Colours can be assigned according to:

  • Production areas
  • High-care and low-care zones
  • Raw and cooked food areas
  • Allergen-controlled areas
  • Specific ingredients
  • Floor and machinery cleaning
  • Toilets and welfare areas
  • Waste handling
  • Engineering areas
  • External cleaning

Some businesses use several of these approaches together. Hillbrush Hygiene products are currently available across a broad palette of 10 colours, giving sites greater flexibility when developing their own system.

How to create a colour-coded cleaning system

1. Understand the risks

Begin with your existing HACCP plan, hygiene procedures and site zoning. Identify where movement of people, products or equipment could introduce contamination.

2. Keep the system simple

Use only as many colours as you genuinely need. If employees need a complicated chart to work out which brush they should pick up, the system is probably too complicated.

3. Colour-code the whole tool where possible

A coloured brush head is useful, but the system becomes clearer when associated handles, buckets, scrapers, squeegees and other equipment follow the same colour allocation.

4. Make storage part of the system

Colour coding works best when tools also have a defined place to be stored. Wall-mounted hangers and shadow boards make it easier to see where equipment belongs and whether something is missing.

5. Train everyone

A colour system only works when it is consistently followed. Employees, agency staff, contractors and anyone else entering the relevant areas should understand what the colours mean.

6. Review the system

Production environments change. New ingredients, allergens, production lines and cleaning processes may introduce new risks. The colour system should therefore be reviewed alongside your wider hygiene procedures.

Colour coding and allergen control

Colour coding can also support allergen management. Specific cleaning equipment can be reserved for an allergen-controlled area or particular production process, reducing the chance of it being accidentally taken elsewhere.

However, colour coding on its own does not remove allergens. Effective allergen control also requires appropriate cleaning procedures, segregation, training, verification and wider production controls. Current FSA guidance identifies 14 regulated allergens that food businesses must communicate to consumers when used in food.

Colour-coded cleaning equipment from Hillbrush

Hillbrush has developed hygiene cleaning equipment for food production and hygiene-critical environments for decades. Our range includes colour-coded brooms, hand brushes, squeegees, buckets, scoops, scrapers, shovels, handles, tube brushes and storage systems, allowing businesses to build a coordinated cleaning system around the requirements of their own facility.

 Explore Hillbrush Hygiene Cleaning Equipment