Almost every carpet cleaning quote is built from the same three things: how much floor area is being cleaned, how soiled it is, and how hard it is to get equipment to it. Once you understand those three, comparing two quotes stops being guesswork.
Our domestic pricing starts from around £25 per room, and commercial work is quoted on floor area and access rather than room count. The number on the quote is the number you pay — we would rather look at the job first than invent a figure over the phone.
The short version
- Room size, not room count, is the real cost driver
- Stairs and landings are priced separately because they take longer per square metre
- Heavy soiling and pet contamination add pre-treatment time
- Access, parking and water supply affect commercial pricing
- A written quote before work starts should be standard, not a favour
What you are actually paying for
The bulk of any carpet cleaning price is time on site plus the consumables used. Pre-spray, tannin or enzyme treatments, rinse agents and machine time all scale with the amount of fibre being cleaned.
A lounge with a low-pile synthetic carpet and light soiling is quick. The same size room in wool twist with pet traffic and a set-in spill needs pre-treatment dwell time, a second pass and often an anti-wicking dry-down — that is where the price difference comes from.
Why stairs cost more per square metre
Stairs cannot be cleaned with a standard wand. They need a hand tool, and every tread and riser is worked individually, which is slow. A staircase and landing frequently takes as long as two ordinary rooms.
Where cheap quotes usually cut corners
The most common shortcut is skipping pre-treatment and going straight to extraction. It looks fine while wet and then dries back grey, because the soil was never chemically released from the fibre.
The second is over-wetting. Pushing too much water in and not pulling enough back out leaves the carpet damp for a day and lets old spills wick back to the surface a week later.
- No pre-spray, no dwell time — soil rebounds within days
- One pass only — visible traffic lanes stay visible
- No spot-specific treatment — the stain you called about survives
- No dry-down management — damp carpet, wicking, and a musty smell
How to compare two quotes fairly
Ask each cleaner what method they use, whether pre-treatment and spot treatment are included, and how long they expect drying to take. If one quote is markedly cheaper, the answer to one of those three questions is usually the reason.