How to price a deep clean (without leaving money on the table)

Deep cleans are where a lot of cleaning businesses quietly lose money. They take longer than a standard clean, wear out your crew, and — if you quote them like a regular visit — eat your margin. Here's a simple way to price them right.

Start with your hourly target

Before anything else, know what your business needs to earn per cleaner-hour to be profitable after wages, supplies, and overhead. Every quote works backward from that number. If you don't know it yet, that's the first thing to fix.

Factor in the home

Bigger homes take longer, but bedrooms and bathrooms drive the work more than square footage alone. Bathrooms and kitchens are the slowest rooms — weight them heavily.

• Bedrooms / bathrooms — your biggest time driver
• Square footage band — adjusts the baseline up or down
• Condition — a first-time deep clean on a neglected home can take twice as long

Add for condition and add-ons

A deep clean isn't one thing. Inside the oven, inside the fridge, baseboards, interior windows, cabinet fronts — each adds real time. List your add-ons and price them individually so the quote reflects the actual job.

Don't forget travel and supplies

Drive time is unpaid time unless you build it in. So are the extra supplies a deep clean burns through. Both belong in the price, not in your margin.

A simple starting formula

(Base + bedrooms + bathrooms + size band) × deep-clean multiplier, then add-ons.

Tune the multiplier until your deep cleans hit your target hourly rate. Want a shortcut? Try our free cleaning quote calculator — it uses exactly this structure.

Price the deep clean for the work it actually is, and it stops being the job that drains your week and starts being one of your most profitable.