domestic
Carpet cleaning
Carpet cleaning costs £35 to £60 a room and £120 to £220 for a three-bedroom house. Hot water extraction cleans deepest and takes four to twelve hours to dry; low moisture methods dry in one to two hours and clean less deeply, which is why offices use them and households often should not.
What this covers
What it costs. Carpet cleaning costs £35 to £60 a room, £120 to £220 for a three-bedroom house and £30 to £50 for a staircase. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Hot water extraction of carpets in an occupied house
- Low moisture cleaning where the room is needed again the same day
- Stain and spot treatment, and pet odour work
- Sofas, armchairs, mattresses and rugs
- Stairs and landings, which are priced separately from rooms
What is involved
The method should follow the fibre, not the price list. Wool can be wet cleaned but shrinks if it is over-wetted and dislikes alkaline detergents. Polypropylene takes extraction well and is nearly indestructible. Natural fibre coverings such as sisal, seagrass and jute should usually not be wet cleaned at all, because they can shrink, discolour or rot. A cleaner who quotes without asking what the carpet is made of has not started work yet.
A proper job has four stages before the machine and one after: dry vacuuming, a pre-spray with time to dwell, agitation, then the extraction pass, then grooming the pile. A great deal of what is in a carpet is dry particulate, and taking it out first is what stops it becoming mud. A visit that starts with the wand and finishes twenty minutes later has skipped the stages that do most of the work.
Drying is the part people underestimate. Ventilation and air movement matter more than the machine, and a cold room with the windows shut can still be damp the next morning.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask what method they propose and why, then ask what the carpet is made of. If they cannot answer the second question they cannot properly answer the first.
Ask whether the price includes pre-vacuuming and pre-spray, because those are the stages most often dropped to hit a price.
The National Carpet Cleaners Association keeps a public member list, which makes it one of the few credentials in this trade that can be checked rather than claimed. It is not compulsory and plenty of good cleaners are not members, but a number you can verify is worth asking for.
Common questions
How long will the carpet take to dry?
Four to twelve hours after hot water extraction, one to two after low moisture cleaning, and effectively none after dry compound. Ventilation and airflow change that figure more than anything else.
Will the carpet get dirty again faster?
Only if detergent residue is left in it, which is what a proper rinse and extraction pass prevents. It is the usual explanation when a carpet re-soils within weeks of being cleaned.