A deep clean costs £26 an hour for each cleaner, with £30 added for kit. Teams start at two people and visits at three hours, which makes £186 the smallest job.
Book this for a home that has slipped: grease on the cupboard doors by the cooker, limescale round the bath taps, skirting boards nobody has washed in a year. Two or more cleaners take it on in one visit, room by room, and the carpets and the sofa can be cleaned in the same booking by the same company.
How the hourly price is worked out
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Each cleaner, each hour | £26 |
| Kit for the job (machines and products) | £30 |
| Minimum job (two cleaners, three hours, kit included) | £186 |
On the call the office asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms there are, when the home last had a thorough going-over and which rooms bother you most. From that it suggests a team and a length of visit: usually two cleaners for a flat and three or four for a large house, for anything from three hours to eight. Two cleaners for four hours, for example, is eight hours at £26 with the kit charge added once. You agree the team and the hours before the day.
Kitchens on a deep clean
The kitchen takes the most hours. Grease collects on the cupboard doors nearest the hob, along the tops of the wall units and on the tiles behind the cooker, and the cleaners degrease all of it. Cupboards and drawers are wiped inside once they have been emptied. The fridge and freezer are cleaned inside if they are empty and defrosted, and cookers and washing machines stay where they stand, with the floor cleaned around them.
The oven is priced as its own item on top of the hourly rate, from £77 for a single. It is cleaned by hand in the kitchen, the same as our oven cleaning service, and is worth adding if the oven has gone a year or more since it was last done.
Bathrooms, skirting boards and cupboard interiors
In the bathroom the cleaners descale taps, shower heads, screens and tiles, wash the grout lines, clean the toilet down to its base and wipe the extractor grille. Black spots in silicone sealant are usually staining inside the sealant itself. The surface is cleaned, the marks often remain, and the lasting fix is new sealant.
In the other rooms the team washes skirting boards, doors, door frames, handles, light switches and radiators. They wipe sills and any glass that can be reached from the floor, and wardrobes and cupboards are cleaned inside if you have emptied them. Lampshades, the tops of picture frames and curtain poles are dusted. Floors come last, once nothing more will fall on them.
Carpets and upholstery in the same booking
Book the carpets with the deep clean and the order of work sorts itself out. The cleaning team finishes the dusting and the hard floors first, then the carpet cleaner follows with a hot water extraction machine, so no dust lands on a damp carpet. Room prices are the standard ones (£43 covers a living room and £36 a bedroom), with every other room on the carpet cleaning page. A two-seat sofa is £57. Leave a window open or the radiators on and they normally dry in a few hours.
If the mess is from building work, plaster and paint, the job is after builders cleaning. Construction dust is finer and slower to clear, and that service is priced at £30 per cleaner per hour.
Questions about deep cleaning
How many hours does a deep clean take?
A deep clean runs from three hours to a full working day. A one-bedroom flat in fair condition is often two cleaners for three or four hours; a neglected four-bedroom house can keep four cleaners busy for most of a day. The office sets the hours with you on the call.
Do I need to empty the cupboards before a deep clean?
Empty any cupboard, drawer or wardrobe you want cleaned inside. Doing it the evening before means the hours you pay for go on cleaning, and the cleaners can wipe each shelf and put nothing back in the wrong place.
Can a regular cleaner keep the house up after a deep clean?
That is a common order of things: the deep clean first, then a weekly or fortnightly regular cleaner from £23 an hour to hold the home at that level.
Does the house need water and electricity during a deep clean?
Yes. The cleaners bring their own products and machines but run them on your sockets and use your hot water, so leave the supply on for the day, and the heating too in cold weather.