Booking the wrong type of clean is the most common reason people are disappointed by a cleaning company. A regular clean maintains a home that is already at standard. A deep clean resets a home that is not. They are different jobs with different pricing, and asking for one while expecting the other is where the friction starts.
Side by side
| Regular clean | Deep clean | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Hold the standard | Reset the standard |
| Frequency | Weekly or fortnightly | One-off, or 1–2 times a year |
| Typical time (3-bed) | 2.5 – 3.5 hrs | 6 – 10 hrs, often two cleaners |
| Pricing | £18 per hour | Fixed price from survey or room count |
| Inside appliances | No | Yes |
| Skirting, doors, frames | Spot-wiped | Washed throughout |
| Limescale removal | Surface only | Descaled and polished |
| Behind and under furniture | Reachable areas | Moved where safe |
What a regular clean covers
A maintenance visit works to a repeatable route: kitchen surfaces, sink and hob exterior, bathrooms sanitised, floors vacuumed and mopped, beds made or changed, bins out, visible surfaces dusted. It is time-boxed, which is the point — the same rooms, the same standard, the same slot each week. Regular domestic cleaning is charged at £18 per hour so you can flex the length rather than renegotiate scope.
What it deliberately does not include: inside the oven, inside the fridge, internal windows beyond the reachable, descaling, wall washing, or moving heavy furniture. Those sit in the deep clean scope because each one alone can absorb an entire regular visit.
What a deep clean covers
A deep clean works top-down through every room and adds the fabric of the house to the list: cornice and light fittings, door frames and tops, switch plates, skirting, radiators and behind them, inside kitchen cupboards and drawers, inside the fridge and freezer, the oven and hob, extractor filters, limescale on taps, screens and tiles, grout lines, internal glass, and floors edge-to-edge after furniture has been moved.
It is priced as a job rather than by the hour because the variable is soiling, not time — and because a fixed price means nobody is watching the clock while cleaning grout.
Four situations that always need a deep clean
- Moving out or in. Deposits turn on inventory-standard cleanliness. That is a specific scope — see the end of tenancy clean and our playbook.
- Before photography or viewings. Cameras find limescale and skirting dust. Pre-sale cleaning exists for exactly this.
- After building or decorating work. Fine dust settles for weeks and needs a specific method — after builders cleaning, not a longer regular visit.
- Starting a new regular service. If a home has been without help for a while, an initial deep clean sets the baseline. Every visit after that is genuinely maintenance, at maintenance prices.
The sequence that saves money
Deep clean once, then hold it. Households that start with a reset and move to fortnightly maintenance spend less over a year than households booking repeated long one-offs, because the second clean of a maintained home is quick and the second clean of a neglected one is not. There is more on the economics of this in why little and often beats the big blitz.
One practical note: book the deep clean for a day you can be out of the house. Two cleaners moving furniture through six rooms is not a background activity.
How to brief either one
Whatever you book, brief it by outcome, not by time. Name the three things that would annoy you if they were missed — usually the oven, the shower screen and the kitchen floor edges — and put them in writing on the booking. Any competent company will price against that and confirm it back. Compare rates on the prices page, or send a room count through the quote form and we will tell you which of the two you actually need.