A price starts with the rooms and bathrooms you name
The room count sets the dusting load and the bathroom count sets the scrubbing load, so both numbers belong on the first call. A studio with one bath is a different job from a two-bedroom with a bath and a half. Say the rooms and the bathrooms, with full and half baths counted separately.
Not every room weighs the same. A bathroom carries more work than a bedroom of the same size, because grout, tile, a shower door, a toilet, a mirror, a sink and the floor all need water and a cloth. A bedroom runs lighter: surfaces to dust and a floor to vacuum.
What moves the price of a house cleaning
Each one changes how much work the cleaning takes.
The home
- Rooms and bathrooms.
- Stairs, an elevator or a front desk.
- Pets.
The cleaning
- Regular, deep, move-out or after a remodel.
- The time since the last cleaning.
- Extras such as inside the oven or fridge.
A studio and a two-bedroom are different conversations
About 41 percent of the city's housing units are studios or one-bedrooms. About 30 percent are two-bedrooms, and about 29 percent are three or more.
In a studio, the kitchen and the bathroom still take the same work they would in a bigger home, but there are fewer rooms around them. In a two- or three-bedroom, each extra room adds a surface list and a floor. The price moves with those rooms more than with the walls between them, which is why the room count sits near the top of any quote.
Deep, move-out and post-construction cleans are priced as their own jobs
Each of those is a different page with a different list. A deep clean reaches work a regular visit does not: inside the oven, inside the fridge, grout, blinds, the baseboards from end to end, the tops of cabinets dusted from the floor. A move-out cleaning works through an empty place, so a cleaner can get inside every cabinet and along every baseboard with nothing in the way. A post-construction cleanup deals with fine drywall dust that bonds to surfaces and needs a different approach than the dust and grease of daily life.
Asking for a regular-visit price on a deep clean, or a deep-clean price on a move-out, leaves the quote short. Say what the job is in your own words on the call, and the right page gets quoted.
The time since the last top-to-bottom clean changes the work more than the size
A home cleaned every week carries less from one visit to the next than a home cleaned every month. What a cleaner finds on a visit tracks the gap since the last cleaning more than the pace of life inside the home.
That matters most on a first visit. When the gap has been long, the first visit has more to work through than the ones that follow, because the film under the toaster, the dust on top of the cabinets and the grit at the back of a drawer were not put there yesterday. A home that has had regular visits in good standing can start on a standard clean; a home that has gone a long stretch without one can start on a deep clean. We tell the difference from a few questions about where the heaviest spots sit and when the home was last cleaned top to bottom. The guide on what a standard visit covers is a useful read before the call.
Stairs, front desks, elevators and parking add steps
Access matters more than people expect. About 49 percent of San Francisco's housing units sit in buildings of five or more units, and about 20 percent sit in buildings of 50 or more. A high-rise condo with a service elevator and a sign-in sheet is a different setup from a Sunset house where the home sits above the garage up a flight of front stairs, which is a different setup again from a two-unit building with the home on the second floor over the garage.
None of this is a reason to turn down a job. The cleaning itself is the same once everyone is inside. The setup and the pack-out are what shift. Say which kind of building you live in on the first call: the floor, the elevator or stairs, the front desk if there is one, and where loading and parking go. Apartment cleaning has more on condos and buildings with buzzers.
Extras ride on the price
Some work sits inside a standard visit, and some rides on top as an extra. Inside the oven, inside the fridge, inside kitchen cabinets, blinds, baseboards cleaned end to end, interior windows that open from the inside: these are things to name on the call so the cleaner has them in the plan from the start.
Picking up the extras you want on the first visit is a smaller conversation than adding them during the day. Products you prefer, or products you want kept out of the home, work the same way: say so on the call. We go over supplies and products when you call, and we can use the ones you have on the shelf.
What an hourly figure leaves out
A rate per hour is the figure that explains the least about the final price. Two crews on the same per-hour number can arrive at different totals in the same home, since the number names an hourly price without naming the work the home needs.
The price and the terms are agreed with us before any cleaning starts.
Why two quotes can differ
A quote from one company and a quote from another can look far apart for a few plain reasons. One counts the inside of the oven as a regular item while the other treats it as an extra, one quotes a per-visit price while the other quotes an hourly rate, and one is pricing a crew of two where the other is pricing one person. The quote built from more questions on the call tends to be the one closer to the home.
When two prices look far apart, read what each one covers before you read the number. A quote that lists its items in plain words is easier to compare, line by line, with the one next to it.
What to tell us when you call
Here is what to have in mind for the call.
| What changes the price | Why it matters | What to tell us when you call |
|---|---|---|
| Rooms and bathrooms | Bathrooms carry the scrubbing load; rooms set the dust list | Count rooms and bathrooms, full and half separately |
| The last top-to-bottom clean | A long gap leaves a backlog | How long it has been since the home was cleaned front to back |
| The kind of cleaning | A deep clean is not a move-out | Which one you think it is, in your own words |
| Pets | Hair and dander land on floors, rugs and furniture | Species, numbers, where the pet goes during a visit |
| Daily use of the kitchen | A kitchen cooked in every night holds more film | How often the stove is on |
| Access | Stairs, elevators and front desks shift the setup | Floor, elevator or stairs, front desk, parking |
| Extras | They add work that is not in the standard list | Oven, fridge, blinds, cabinets, interior windows |
| Products | A finish can react to the wrong one | What to use, what to avoid, what sits on your shelf |
| Schedule | A recurring visit carries less from stop to stop | Weekly, every other week, monthly, or one time |
Every quote comes from a conversation about the home and the kind of cleaning you want.