domestic
Domestic cleaning, regular and one-off
A domestic cleaner charges £15 to £22 an hour across most of the UK and £20 to £30 in London, with two hours the usual minimum visit. A three-bedroom house takes three to four hours to clean properly, which is where most weekly arrangements land.
What this covers
What it costs. A domestic cleaner costs £15 to £22 an hour outside London and £20 to £30 inside it. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Weekly or fortnightly cleaning of an occupied home
- Kitchens: worktops, hob, sink, front of units and the floor
- Bathrooms: bath, shower, screen, WC, basin and mirrors
- Dusting, vacuuming and mopping through the living rooms and bedrooms
- Changing bed linen and putting a wash on where that is agreed
What is involved
The work is a fixed round done on a repeating visit, and what makes it work is that the scope is agreed rather than assumed. Three hours in a three-bedroom house covers the core rooms properly every week, with the rest on rotation, so the arrangements that last usually have a fixed weekly core, the kitchen, the bathrooms and the floors, with a rotating extra on top: bedrooms one week, the oven and the fridge the next.
Time spent tidying is time not spent cleaning, so a clear house is the single biggest thing that gets more out of a regular clean. Clearing worktops and floors before the visit can be the difference between a bathroom being cleaned and being wiped.
Products and equipment vary by arrangement. Many cleaners use what is in the house, some bring their own and charge a few pounds a visit for it, and either is normal. What matters is agreeing which before the first visit rather than discovering it on the third.
What the evidence says
Standards and published measurements, cited so they can be checked.
Why a cheaper clean takes longer
Cleaning has four inputs that trade against each other: time, temperature, chemistry and mechanical work. Drop one and something else has to rise to hold the result steady. That is the whole economics of a quote. A company working cold, with mild products and no scrubbing, needs hours to reach the finish another reaches in one, and a company that has quoted one hour has decided which of the four it is spending.
Herbert Sinner, Henkel, 1959. The four-factor model of cleaning, published while Sinner was a chemist at Henkel and still the standard account of how a cleaning process trades off against itself.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask who will actually come and whether it will be the same person each week, because continuity is most of what makes this work: the second visit is usually better than the first, because the cleaner now knows the house.
Ask to see a public liability insurance certificate. It is one page and any insured business can email a copy in a minute. If anybody other than the owner will be in your house, ask for employer's liability too, which is a legal requirement once a business has employees.
Then settle the practical details in writing: the notice period, what happens to a cancelled visit, and how holidays are handled. Agreeing those three at the start is what keeps a long arrangement running smoothly.
Worth reading first:
Common questions
How long should a regular clean take?
Two to three hours for a two-bedroom flat, three to four for a three-bedroom house, four to five for a four-bedroom house. Less than that is a maintenance visit rather than a clean, which is a fine thing to buy as long as both sides know it.
Do I need to be at home?
Not usually, and most regular arrangements end up on a key or a code. Be there for the first visit, though, so you can walk the property together and say which rooms matter most to you.