Note · 2026-09-21

How do you price a house cleaning job — hourly, flat rate, or per square foot?

There are four common pricing methods for a cleaning job and none of them works without a room-by-room walkthrough first. Here is what each method needs, and the walkthrough data that feeds all four.

A price quoted before walking the property is a guess wearing a dollar sign. The number that actually holds up depends on four things a walkthrough has to capture: a condition rating per room (how heavy the clean actually is, not just square footage), an estimated minutes-per-room figure, which pricing method you use, and who supplies materials.

The four pricing methods, and what each one needs

• Hourly — total estimated minutes (summed room by room), converted to hours, × your hourly rate, plus travel time. Needs an accurate per-room minute estimate, which is why the walkthrough rates each room's condition on a scale (light to heavy) instead of assuming every kitchen takes the same time.
• Flat rate per visit — a fixed quote for the whole job, usually set from the same room-by-room minute total but padded for the unknowns a flat price has to absorb (a client who under-describes clutter, pets, or add-ons).
• Per square foot / m² — a rate multiplied by the property's size. Simplest to quote sight-unseen, but in our experience the least accurate: a 900 sq ft apartment with three bathrooms and heavy pet hair can take longer than a 1,400 sq ft home in light condition, and a pure square-footage rate misses that entirely.
• Per room — a flat amount per room type (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom), adjusted by condition. Easy for clients to understand, but still needs the same condition rating as the hourly method to avoid under-pricing a heavily used kitchen.

What the walkthrough actually records

A useful walkthrough sheet does not stop at "how big is the house." Room by room, it records: the room name, a condition rating (a simple 1–5 scale, light to heavy), an estimated minutes figure, and add-on notes (inside-oven, windows, pets, clutter) that change the time regardless of which pricing method you pick. Then it separates the first clean's total minutes from the recurring visit's minutes — in our experience, a first clean on a property that has not been professionally cleaned in months runs longer than every visit after it, and quoting both at the same price undercharges the first one.

Supplies is a pricing input too, not an afterthought

Who provides cleaning supplies and equipment — the business, the client, or a mix — changes the real cost of the job, so it belongs in the same worksheet as the room ratings and the minute estimate, decided and written down before the quote goes out, not negotiated after.

Our <a href="/cleaning-forms/">Cleaning Business Forms Kit</a> includes a Walkthrough &amp; Estimate Worksheet that captures exactly this — a 12-row room-by-room condition/minutes/add-ons table (11 rooms pre-labelled, one blank), a first-clean-vs-recurring minutes split, a four-way pricing-method checklist (hourly, flat rate, per sq&nbsp;ft/m&sup2;, per room), and a supplies-source checklist — plus a separate itemised Cleaning Quote form to write the walkthrough numbers up as a client-facing, signable price. Totals are typed in by hand on both forms; these are fillable forms, not a calculator. 18 forms total (intake, checklists for six job types, invoice, incident report, and operations logs), fillable PDF and Word. General information, not tax or legal advice.