What Is Included in a Deep Clean for a House?

Most articles answering this question give you the same list: dust the ceiling fan, wipe the skirting boards, clean the window tracks, scrub the grout. The list is not wrong. It is just not the part that matters when you are paying someone else to do the work.

What matters is scope. A deep clean is defined by what is agreed before anyone opens a bottle: which surfaces are treated, which fittings are moved, which windows are done, how much contact time the products get, and what happens to the things that cannot be cleaned at all. Two companies can both say "deep clean, 100 m², all included" and be quoting for jobs that differ by a factor of two in labour.

This article sets out what our teams actually do on a residential deep clean in Paris, Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines, in the order we do it, along with the exclusions we put in writing and the pricing logic behind the quotation. It is written for homeowners, tenants, landlords and property managers who want to compare quotes properly — not for people looking for a weekend cleaning tutorial.

What is the difference between a deep clean and a regular clean?

A regular clean maintains a standard that has already been set: floors, visible surfaces, sanitary fittings, bins. It works around furniture. A deep clean restores a standard that has been lost: it moves what can be moved, treats every reachable surface with surface-appropriate chemistry, and gives products the contact time they need to work. Four services get confused with each other, and they are priced differently.

Regular or maintenance cleaning

The recurring visit. Floors, visible surfaces, kitchen worktops, sanitary fittings, mirrors, bins, general tidying. Designed to hold a property at a standard, not to reach one. It cleans around furniture; it does not move it.

Deep cleaning (grand nettoyage / nettoyage en profondeur)

A one-off intervention that resets the property to a clean baseline. Everything reachable is treated, including the surfaces routine cleaning never reaches. Most homes need one every six to twelve months, more often with pets, small children, heavy home cooking, or a smoker in the household.

End of tenancy or move-in cleaning

A deep clean carried out in an empty property, measured against the état des lieux. Empty changes everything: no furniture to work around, no belongings to protect, and every cupboard interior, wardrobe and radiator back accessible. Usually faster per square metre than a deep clean of an occupied home, with a stricter expected result because there is nothing to hide behind. If this is your situation, our end of tenancy cleaning service is the correct page.

Post-renovation cleaning

A different discipline. Fine construction dust settles everywhere, resettles after you have cleaned, and needs several passes with appropriate filtration. There may be plaster splashes, paint spots, adhesive residue and protective film to remove. Booking a standard deep clean after building work and expecting a post-renovation result is the most common scope mismatch we see.

What does a deep clean include, room by room?

Below is what our teams physically do on a residential deep clean. Scope is confirmed per property before the visit — some items depend on access, materials and what you want prioritised.

Before anything is touched: the walk-through

Five minutes here saves an hour later and prevents damage. We identify what we are dealing with and what must not be treated aggressively:

• Floor materials — tile, PVC, lino, parquet (varnished, oiled or waxed changes everything), marble, polished concrete, resin.
• Kitchen condition — surface grease or old polymerised grease. Not the same problem, not the same time.
• Bathroom condition — limescale, soap scum, mould in joints, and the state of the silicone itself.
• Access — what can be moved, ceiling height, window type, anything requiring equipment we would need to bring.
• Delicate or damaged surfaces — natural stone, brass, lacquered finishes, existing scratches and stains, flagged before we start rather than after.

What is included in a kitchen deep clean?

The kitchen absorbs a disproportionate share of the hours, and it should. Grease is not dust — it does not come off by wiping harder. Depending on agreed scope, we treat:

• Worktops, splashbacks, and the joints where the worktop meets the wall.
• Cabinet fronts, handles, edges and the top edges of doors — the surfaces carrying a fine grease film everyone touches and nobody cleans.
• Hob, extractor hood exterior and accessible grease deposits, filter housing where reachable.
• Sink, taps, drain surround, and limescale on the spout.
• Appliance exteriors including the tops, plus the floor and wall areas behind or under appliances that can be safely moved.
• Skirting boards, switches, door frame, radiator, and finally the floor.

What is included in a bathroom deep clean?

A bathroom deep clean targets the deposits routine cleaning leaves behind because it uses one product for everything:

• Shower screen and shower walls, including the bottom strip and the frame channels where scum collects.
• Taps, shower head, sanitary fittings, and around and behind the toilet base and hinges.
• Tile joints and silicone joints — treated differently, since silicone can be permanently marked by the wrong product.
• Vanity unit, mirror, cabinet interiors where included, extractor grille and VMC vent.
• Skirting boards, corners, door frame, radiator or towel rail, then the floor.

What is included in bedrooms and living rooms?

This is where the difference is least visible and most felt. Vacuuming the floor is maintenance. A deep clean addresses the dust that lives everywhere except the floor:

• Skirting boards, door frames, doors, handles, light switches and sockets.
• Accessible high surfaces, light fittings, ceiling mouldings, cornices and air vents.
• Radiators, including between the panels where dust cakes and then circulates every time the heating comes on.
• Furniture surfaces, and underneath and behind furniture that can be safely moved — not cleaned around.
• Window ledges, window tracks, shutter boxes where accessible, and upholstery when specifically included in the quote.

How are floors treated in a deep clean?

Floors are where inexperienced cleaning does lasting damage. The treatment depends entirely on the material, and applying one method across a whole property is a mistake:

• Tile and polished concrete — tolerate mechanical action and appropriate pads; joints usually need separate attention.
• Parquet — the finish dictates everything. Excess water, aggressive alkalis or the wrong pad will lift, dull or mark it, and the repair is sanding and refinishing, not cleaning.
• Marble and natural stone — no acidic products, ever. Etching is permanent.
• PVC, lino and resin — sensitive to over-dosed detergent, which leaves a film that attracts dirt and produces the sticky floor that reappears two days after cleaning.

Are windows included in a deep clean?

Interior glass, frames, accessible tracks and sills are included when windows are in scope — and windows are quoted separately, because "deep clean a 100 m² apartment" does not automatically mean every pane in the property.

• Difficulty scales with the building, not the floor area: number of panes, fixed windows, tilt-and-turn units, bay windows, verandas, glass roofs, shutters and railings each change the time required.
• Older Parisian and Haussmannian stock adds time again — tall casement windows, deep reveals and original ironmongery are slower than modern units.
• Exterior faces that cannot be reached safely from inside require different equipment and sometimes a different qualification. If nobody has mentioned this to you, it is not in the price.

What order should a deep clean be done in?

Top to bottom, and dry before wet. Two teams can use identical products and identical hours and produce different results, and sequence accounts for most of the gap. Three rules do the work.

Top to bottom, always

Everything that falls, falls downward. High surfaces, light fittings, door tops and shelves come before furniture, and furniture comes before floors. A team that mops early will walk dust back onto a wet floor and finish with a worse result than if they had never mopped at all.

Dry work before wet work

Dust is removed dry. Introducing water into loose dust makes mud, and mud goes into corners, joints and textured surfaces where it then has to be dug out. In a genuinely dusty property, the dry pass is most of the job and the wet pass is the finish.

Apply, wait, then remove

Every product that does real work — degreasers, descalers, mould treatments — needs contact time. The professional pattern is to apply across a zone, move to another task, and come back. Working surface by surface without staging the chemistry is how three hours produce two hours of output.

What is not included in a deep clean?

Unless specifically written into the quotation, a deep clean does not include moving very heavy furniture, dismantling appliances, unreachable exterior windows, waste removal, mould remediation, pest treatment, carpet extraction or decluttering. This is the section most competitors leave out, and it is the one that prevents arguments. In full:

• Moving very heavy furniture, or anything whose movement risks damage to it or to the floor.
• Dismantling appliances, or cleaning inside every appliance — oven and fridge interiors are normally quoted as options.
• Exterior window faces that cannot be reached safely, and any work at height requiring specialist access equipment.
• Removal of construction waste, bulky items or hazardous waste.
• Mould remediation and pest treatment. Cleaning a mouldy joint is cleaning; treating the cause is a different trade.
• Carpet and upholstery extraction, which requires injection-extraction equipment and its own drying time, and is quoted separately.
• Decluttering, sorting or disposing of personal belongings, and any repair, painting or restoration work.

Can a deep clean remove every stain?

No. A professional cleaner removes dirt, grease, dust, limescale and deposits — that is the whole job. If a surface is scratched, chemically etched, burned, permanently pigmented or worn through, cleaning will reveal the damage rather than repair it. A dulled parquet floor needs refinishing. Etched marble needs polishing by a stone specialist. A silicone joint colonised through its full depth needs replacing, not scrubbing — and scrubbing it harder only tears it.

How long does a deep clean take?

A studio or small apartment in reasonable condition is typically a half-day for a team; a larger or neglected property becomes a full day or more, often with two or three agents. There is no honest formula converting floor area into hours, and any calculator that gives you a firm number from square metres alone is guessing.

Why floor area is a poor predictor

A 60 m² apartment cleaned weekly for two years can be a lighter job than a 45 m² apartment that has had no serious clean in eight months. Condition dominates surface area. So does layout: two bathrooms in 70 m² is more work than one bathroom in 110 m². Older Parisian and Haussmannian stock adds time again — deep mouldings, cornices, panelled doors, herringbone parquet and tall casement windows all take longer than the flat surfaces of a modern build.

What actually drives the hours

• Condition — how long since the last thorough clean, and what has accumulated.
• Number of wet rooms — kitchens and bathrooms are the time sinks, not bedrooms.
• Windows in scope — type, number and accessibility, not floor area.
• Occupancy and clutter — an occupied, furnished home takes longer than an empty one of the same size.
• Materials — delicate floors and finishes require slower, more careful methods.

How much does a deep clean cost?

Fixed prices start from €100–€150 for a studio, €160–€200 for a one-bedroom flat, €250 for two bedrooms, €300 for three bedrooms and €350 for four bedrooms or more. The service is bespoke, so the final price depends on the scope you choose. Underneath the band sits a labour calculation — hours × number of agents, with equipment, products and travel accounted for, against a reference rate of 26 € excl. VAT per hour per agent (31.90 € incl. VAT) — but what you receive is a fixed figure confirmed before we start.

Indicative fixed prices

A deep clean is bespoke: you choose what goes in it, so the final figure depends on the scope you pick. The bands below cover a property in ordinary condition with a standard scope, and every band is confirmed as a fixed price before we start — there is no hourly meter running on the day. Extras such as oven and fridge interiors, upholstery and carpet extraction, and window cleaning are priced on top. Properties left unattended for long periods, or needing several days of work, are quoted separately after a site visit.

• Studio flat — from €100–€150, typically 2–4 hours.
• 1 bedroom flat — from €160–€200, typically 3–5 hours.
• 2 bedroom flat or house — from €250, typically 3–6 hours.
• 3 bedroom house — from €300, typically 4–7 hours.
• 4+ bedroom house — from €350, typically 8 hours or more, usually with two or more agents.

Because the service is built to order, two homes of the same size can land at different prices. What moves the figure is condition, the number of bathrooms, and which extras you add — not square metres alone.

Does the 50% tax credit apply?

Domestic cleaning at a private residence can fall under the French services à la personne framework, which carries a 50% tax credit and the avance immédiate mechanism, provided the specific service and the household meet the eligibility conditions. It is not automatic and does not apply to every type of intervention, so we confirm it case by case rather than advertising it as a headline discount.

Three homes, three completely different jobs

Anonymised, and chosen because they are typical rather than dramatic.

The apartment that already looked clean

A well-maintained flat, cleaned regularly, no visible problem from the doorway. There was no before-and-after photograph worth taking. What the team found once they worked in detail was the standard accumulation maintenance cleaning structurally cannot reach: dust ridged along the skirting boards, dirt lines where furniture meets the wall, deposits in the bathroom corners and joint edges, a grease film on cabinet fronts and handles, dust on top of door frames, and packed grit in the window tracks. The result was not visual drama. It was a home that felt different — less dusty air, cleaner light at the windows, nothing tacky underfoot. This is the most common deep clean we do, and the one clients most often assume they do not need.

The kitchen with fifteen years of grease

An owner who cleaned regularly and conscientiously, but had never dealt with what had built up around the cooking zone. From two metres away the kitchen looked fine. Up close, the cabinet fronts above the hob, the extractor surround, the handles and the top edges of the doors carried a layer that ordinary detergent slides across without lifting. The answer was not a stronger product — a caustic degreaser on those fronts would have stripped the finish. It was correct dosing, proper dwell time, mechanical removal with the right pad, and working in passes rather than trying to take it off in one go. Old polymerised grease comes off in layers, and the job is finished when the surface stops feeling slightly tacky under a clean, dry cloth.

The three-hour booking that needed a reset

A client booked a few hours of ordinary cleaning. On arrival, the condition made it clear that three hours of maintenance would produce a cosmetically improved but fundamentally unchanged property. We said so, explained the difference, and gave the option: proceed as booked and accept a surface result, or convert to a proper deep clean now and return to a light maintenance schedule afterwards. They took the second option. Financially it is almost always the better one — one substantial reset followed by cheap regular visits costs less over a year than repeatedly buying maintenance hours that are being asked to do a job they were never designed for.

What goes wrong when a deep clean is done badly

The failures we are called in to correct are rarely about buying the wrong bottle. They are about method.

• Over-dosing the detergent. More product does not mean more cleaning. Excess surfactant leaves a residue that attracts dirt and produces a floor that is sticky within days — then gets "fixed" with more product, which makes it worse.
• One product for the whole property. A descaler is not an all-purpose cleaner, and neither is a degreaser. Using either in the wrong place wastes the hour and can mark the surface.
• No dwell time. Spray, wipe, move on. It looks like fast work and removes almost nothing that is genuinely stuck.
• The wrong pad or machine. Mechanical action is excellent on the right material and destructive on the wrong one. Damage from an aggressive pad on a delicate floor is not reversible by cleaning.
• Cleaning floors before finishing the dusty work — then walking back across them for the rest of the visit.
• Cleaning around furniture instead of moving what can safely be moved. The single clearest marker of a maintenance clean sold as a deep clean.

Regular clean vs deep clean: what changes, area by area