How to work out what to charge for house cleaning

1. Find your true cost per working hour

Add up, per month:

• the income you need to take home,
• tax and national insurance or your local equivalent,
• transport and parking,
• supplies and equipment, replaced over time,
• insurance, phone, software, any advertising,
• and — the one everyone forgets — the hours you do not get paid for: quoting, travel, admin, invoicing.

Divide your monthly total by the hours you can realistically bill in a month. If you work 40 hours but only 28 are on the job, you must cover your costs from 28 — not 40. That number is your floor. Quote below it and you are paying to work.

2. Choose how you price

Hourly is safest while you are still learning how long jobs take, and it is easy to explain. Flat rate is what clients prefer — they know the number up front — and it rewards you for getting faster. Per room sits in between and is easy to quote on a walkthrough.

A common, low-risk path: price hourly for the first month with each new client, note how long it actually took, then move them to a flat rate that matches your floor and a sensible margin.

3. Price the first clean differently

A first clean is not a regular clean. Ovens, fridges, skirting, limescale, and built-up grime take far longer. Quote it as a deep clean on its own line, then quote the recurring price separately. Clients accept this when they can see the two lines; they resist it when the first visit simply costs more for no stated reason.

4. Present it as lines, not a number

A quote that reads “Deep clean — 3 bed / 2 bath · £x”, “Inside oven · £y”, “Interior windows · 6 × £z” is easier to say yes to, because the client can see what they are buying and what they could drop if it is too much. It also protects you: “the windows were not included” ends the conversation.

5. Raising prices without losing clients

• Give notice — a month is normal — and keep the tone matter-of-fact.
• Explain the reason briefly: time on the job, supplies, travel.
• Do not apologise or offer a discount you will regret. A clear number is easier to accept than a nervous one.
• Expect to lose a few clients; that is the point. You are replacing your lowest-margin work first.

A worked sketch

Say you need £2,600 a month to cover everything and pay yourself, and you can realistically bill 112 hours (28 a week). Your floor is about £23 an hour. A four-hour deep clean cannot be sold for less than roughly £92 before you have made a penny of profit — and your recurring price is a separate calculation based on the time that visit actually takes.

Those figures are an illustration of the method, not a market rate. Run the same arithmetic with your own costs and your own billable hours.