Everything a regular clean skips.
A deep clean is not a better regular clean. It is the same rooms with the lids off — inside the oven, inside the cupboards, the limescale, the grout, the tops of things and everything behind the furniture.
- Regular, plus the delta
- About 1.6× the time
- The whole kit included
- Kitchen75 min / 45
- Bathroom65 min / 40
- Bedroom50 min / 30
- Living room50 min / 30
- Hallway25 min / 15
- Balcony25 min / 10
The twice-a-year job, not a bigger weekly one.
Everything on the regular list still happens. On top of it, a deep clean opens the things a maintenance visit wipes the outside of, and reaches the places it walks past.
That is the whole definition, and it is worth being this literal about it: across six or more UK operators the added tasks are almost identical, room for room. What varies between companies is the price, not the list.
What a deep clean adds.
Each list below is on top of the regular clean for that room. If you want the base list too, it is set out in full on the regular cleaning page. The regular list, room by room.
Kitchen
75 minEverything on the regular list, plus:
- Descale the sink and taps
- Clean the oven inside, racks included
- Clean the microwave inside
- Clean the fridge inside, on emptied shelves
- Splashback tiles and grout
- Inside the cupboards, where they have been emptied
- Skirting boards, the door and its frame
- Behind and under anything that moves
Bathroom
65 minEverything on the regular list, plus:
- Descale the taps, the showerhead and the screen
- Scrub the tile grout
- Treat surface mould spots
- Skirting boards, the door and the handles
- Wipe the radiator
- Inside the bathroom cabinet, where it has been emptied
Bedroom
50 minEverything on the regular list, plus:
- Under and behind the bed and the furniture
- Skirting, the door, the frame, the switches
- Wardrobe tops, high dust, cobwebs
- Light fittings and lampshades
- Vacuum the upholstery and the headboard
- The window from the inside, and the sill
Living room
50 minEverything on the regular list, plus:
- Vacuum the sofa, and under the cushions
- Under and behind the sofa and the furniture
- Skirting, doors, frames, switches
- High dust, cobwebs, light fittings
- The window from the inside, and the sill
Hallway
25 minEverything on the regular list, plus:
- The banister and the stair treads
- Skirting, door frames, switches
- High dust and cobwebs
Balcony
25 minEverything on the regular list, plus:
- The railings
- The glazing from the inside
- Wipe down the furniture
Where the extra time goes.
Room for room, a deep clean runs at about 1.6 times a regular one. It is not spread evenly: the kitchen and the bathroom absorb most of it, because that is where the sealed-up, scaled-up and baked-on work lives.
| Room | Regular | Deep |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen | 45 min | 75 min |
| Bathroom | 40 min | 65 min |
| Bedroom | 30 min | 50 min |
| Living room | 30 min | 50 min |
| Hallway | 15 min | 25 min |
| Balcony | 10 min | 25 min |
Minutes are typical, for one cleaner working alone. A whole two-bed on this table comes to a little over five hours — which is why a deep clean is usually booked as its own day rather than squeezed into a regular slot.
The minutes are ours, and worth reading with the caveat attached: most of the room-level time data we could find is American — three of twenty sources are British — so the totals are pinned to UK whole-property benchmarks and reproduce them within 7%. That rescales the American minutes to a British home. What it does not settle is how the time splits between the rooms, and we say so on the cost page.
Dearer by the hour, not just longer.
This is the part people get backwards. A deep clean is not a bulk discount for buying more hours — across the UK market it runs at £20 to £30 an hour against roughly £17 to £20 for a regular clean. Those are other companies' published figures, not ours.
The reason is in the tasks. Scrubbing an oven and descaling a shower screen is slower, harder, more physical work than wiping a worktop, and the market prices it that way. Any quote that treats deep as a per-hour saving is arguing with every operator that publishes a rate.
We set the market numbers out in full, with their sources, on the cost page.
Four things that decide how much you get.
A deep clean is the one visit where what you do the night before changes the result. Three of the four biggest tasks are gated on access.
- 01
Empty what you want cleaned inside
Cupboards, drawers and the bathroom cabinet are cleaned inside where they have been emptied. A full cupboard gets its front wiped, same as on a regular clean.
- 02
Clear the fridge shelves
Inside the fridge is a deep-clean task on emptied shelves. Half an hour with a cool bag the night before is the difference between a cleaned fridge and a wiped door.
- 03
Decide about the oven
It is the single longest task in the house and the one most often mistaken for the whole job. If it matters most, say so — it changes how the rest of the time is spent.
- 04
Move what only you can move
Under and behind the furniture is on the list, but a cleaner working alone will not shift a wardrobe or a full bookcase. Anything you want reached, and cannot be moved by one person, is worth clearing a path to.
For a deep clean, the kit comes with the cleaner.
This is the market convention and it is close to unanimous — Housekeep, Fantastic and Buzz Maids all include the equipment and the products in a deep clean rather than expecting the household's. It is the practical answer as much as the commercial one: descaling and grout need particular products, and a domestic mop is not what you want against a skirting board. Whatever you would prefer, say so in the booking — that is what the note is for.
Questions, answered.
No, and the difference matters if you are moving. An end-of-tenancy clean is done to an inventory standard on an empty property: inside every cupboard in every room, all the windows and their frames and tracks, the extractor filter, the radiators. It assumes nobody lives there and the fridge has been defrosted. A deep clean is that level of attention applied to a home somebody is still living in.
Room for room, about 1.6 times a regular clean — a kitchen goes from roughly 45 minutes to 75, a bathroom from 40 to 65, a bedroom from 30 to 50. A two-bed comes out a little over five hours in total, which is a day's work for one person.
Inside, yes — the glass and the sill, in the rooms on the list. Outside, no. Exterior windows are a separate trade with separate equipment, and no cleaning visit of any type includes them.
Only the ones you want cleaned inside. The published checklists all say the same thing — inside a cupboard is a deep-clean task where the cupboard has been emptied. Leave it full and it is treated as it would be on a regular clean: fronts and handles.
Most households land on once or twice a year, or around an event — moving in, a lease ending, a renovation finishing, a winter of closed windows. If the limescale and the oven have got ahead of you, that is the signal, not the calendar.
It is the sensible way to buy it when one room is the problem — usually the kitchen or the bathroom, which between them carry most of the extra work. Bear in mind the market's two-hour minimum visit, which a single room can sit inside comfortably.
See what a deep clean costs for your home.
The app prices it from the rooms and the address rather than a table. iPhone and Android.
