After builders cleaning in the UK typically costs £180 to £350 for a single room refurbishment, £250 to £450 for a kitchen or bathroom fit-out, £350 to £600 for a loft conversion and £500 to £900 for an extension of two to three rooms. A whole house renovation is normally quoted after a site visit, because the spread on those jobs is too wide to guess at from a description.
Those are typical UK market ranges rather than any one company's price list, and they cover the clean across its stages rather than a single visit. The number that matters to you sits inside those bands somewhere, and where it sits is decided almost entirely by dust load, how many stages you book, and who is dealing with the waste.
What it costs, by scope
| Scope | Typical UK range |
|---|---|
| Single room refurbishment | £180 to £350 |
| Kitchen or bathroom fit-out | £250 to £450 |
| Loft conversion | £350 to £600 |
| Extension, 2 to 3 rooms | £500 to £900 |
| Whole house renovation | Quoted after a site visit |
Notice what is missing from that table: bedroom count. Domestic cleaning prices by property size because the workload scales roughly with rooms. A builders clean does not work that way. The drivers are the surface area to be cleaned and the amount of construction residue sitting on it, which is why the same three bedroom house can be a £300 job or a £1,500 job depending on what was actually done to it.
A rewire that touched every room produces less residue than a single new bathroom, because chasing and making good is dust you can vacuum, while a fit-out leaves silicone, adhesive, grout haze, protective film and packaging on top of the dust. An empty extension is also faster per square metre than a small kitchen full of new units with tape residue on every door.
What moves the price
How many stages you book. A builders clean is normally quoted in two or three stages: the rough clean, the detail clean, and a final buff a day or two later once suspended dust has landed again. Each stage is priced. A quote covering one stage and a quote covering three are not comparable numbers, and the gap between them is the single most common reason two quotes on the same job look hundreds of pounds apart.
Whether the builder has done a rough clear first. Most contracts oblige the builder to leave the site clear of their own debris and offcuts. When that has happened, the cleaner starts on productive work immediately. When it has not, the first hours go on moving timber, plasterboard offcuts and half-used materials before anything can be cleaned, charged at a cleaning rate. Ask your builder to confirm the clear, then say so when you request the quote.
Waste, and who removes it. This is where quotes diverge most and where the assumptions are least often stated out loud. Construction waste is controlled waste, and anyone who removes it carries a legal duty of care over it: it has to go to an authorised site, be transferred with the right paperwork, and be carried by someone registered as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency. A cleaning contractor who takes builders waste away is doing regulated work, not doing you a favour, and it is priced accordingly. A clean that includes waste removal will almost never include skip hire, which is a separate cost you or your builder arrange. What a cleaning quote usually does include is the packaging and protective film generated by the clean itself. Confirm which of the three you are being offered, because "waste removed" means all of them to different companies.
Protective film on glass and units. Film peels cleanly when fresh. Left on through months of site conditions, the adhesive cures, the film tears into strips, and each pane or door front becomes a slow job with a solvent and a blade. That alone can add hours to a fit-out clean. If your units and glazing are still filmed, say how long they have been that way.
Whether services are live. Water and power on site is a precondition, not a detail. Without live water there is no rinsing, mopping or bucket changes, so the cleaner brings water in and works slower. Without power there is no vacuum, and vacuuming is most of the job. Sites without working lighting also rule out the detail work that depends on seeing a surface at a shallow angle. Any of these raises the quote.
Access and floor protection. A ground floor property with parking outside prices lower than a third floor flat with no lift, because equipment, water and waste all move by hand. Lifting and disposing of floor protection is a task in itself, and new floors have curing rules dictating what can be washed and when. If the protection is staying down for a later phase, say so, because it changes what can be finished.
Why one clean on a site with no interim clean costs more
The most expensive way to buy a builders clean is to book a single visit at the end of a long project during which nothing was cleaned at all.
Dust accumulates in layers and those layers behave differently. Fresh plaster dust vacuums off. The same dust that has been sitting for six weeks through wet trades, foot traffic and temperature swings gets walked into floors, drawn into window tracks and radiator fins, and bonded onto surfaces by moisture and then dried again. Removing it stops being extraction and becomes mechanical work, surface by surface.
An interim clean between phases, even a rough one, resets that. It costs money on the day and removes the hardest part of the final clean, which is why two visits on a long project frequently total less than one heroic visit at the end. Scheduling is easier too, since a compressed single clean before a fixed handover date usually needs several operatives at once, and that carries its own premium.
The same logic applies in reverse to snagging. If a joiner comes back to adjust a door after the final buff, you pay for that stage twice.
Getting a quote you can compare
Describe the work, not the property. What was built, how many square metres, what trades were involved and how long the site has been running. "Three bed semi" tells a cleaner almost nothing.
Say what stage the site is at. Every trade finished including snagging, or more work to come.
State the waste position explicitly. Builder clearing their own debris, skip already on site, or nothing arranged.
Ask what is excluded. Window exteriors, external areas, garages, lofts and integrated appliance interiors are the usual gaps.
Get it in writing per stage with what each stage covers. A quote that gives one number for "after builders clean" is a quote you cannot check afterwards.
For a fuller picture of the method behind the price, read our guide to after builders cleaning, which covers the stages, the specialist parts and the health precautions in detail.
Frequently asked questions
Is after builders cleaning more expensive than a deep clean? Usually yes for the same property, because it needs different equipment, moves more material and normally takes more than one visit. It is a different job rather than a harder version of the same one.
Why will nobody quote my whole house renovation over the phone? Because the range is genuinely too wide. Dust load, residue type, protective film, floor finishes and access vary so much on full renovations that a remote number would be a guess. A site visit is quicker for both sides than a quote that has to be revised.
Should I get the clean before or after snagging? After. A single trade returning for an afternoon undoes a detail clean, and you then pay for that stage again.
Does the price include the skip? No. Skip hire is a separate cost you or your builder arrange. A cleaning quote may include removing the packaging and film generated by the clean, and it may include removing construction waste as a regulated service, but those are different things and worth confirming individually.
Can I cut the cost by doing the rough clean myself? Yes, and it is the most effective saving available, provided you use the right protection and extraction. Bulk debris removal and film stripping are the least skilled parts of the job. The detail work and the glass are the parts worth paying for.
How long does it take? A single room is normally a day across its stages. A fit-out is one to two days. An extension is two to three, spread so the final buff falls after the dust has settled rather than on the same afternoon.
