What a deep clean actually covers, room by room

The difference is what gets opened

A regular clean deals with the surfaces you touch. A deep clean opens the things that normally stay shut: the oven, the fridge, the extractor, the seals along the shower screen, the window frames. Nothing on that list gets dirty in a week, and everything on it gets dirty over a year.

It is also why time estimates mislead. A deep clean of a sixty square metre flat runs six to nine hours with two people, and what moves that number is not the floor area. It is how long the oven has been left.

Kitchen

• Oven inside, with the door glass separated where the model allows, the racks, and the roof of the cavity
• Extractor filter degreased, or replaced where it is a paper one
• Fridge emptied, shelves out, the door seal and the drip channel at the back
• Behind and under the appliances, which in a rented Budapest flat is where the previous tenant still lives
• Cupboard fronts and handles, and the top of the cupboards, which you never see and every guest does
• Tiles and grout behind the hob
• Kettle and coffee machine descaled

Bathroom

• Limescale off the screen, the taps and the shower head, which on Budapest water is the single biggest visible change in the flat
• Grout scrubbed, and the silicone seals treated or flagged for replacement where the mould is inside them
• Toilet including the base, the hinges and the cistern lid
• Extractor vent cover
• Hair out of the shower and basin drains

The rest of the flat

• Skirting boards, door frames and the tops of the doors
• Light switches, sockets and handles
• Radiators, between the fins included
• Window frames, sills and the channels they drain into
• Inside wardrobes where they are empty, and behind any furniture we can move safely
• Floors at the very end, after everything above them has come down

What a deep clean does not include

• Anything needing a machine of its own: carpets, upholstery, mattresses. Those are separate services and can be done the same day
• Walls, beyond spot cleaning. Painted walls in a Budapest flat mark easily, and washing them often takes the paint with it
• Outside glass above the first floor
• Clearing possessions. We clean around what is there unless you tell us in advance what goes
• Mould coming through the wall. That is damp, and cleaning it treats the symptom

The move-out clean is a different job with the same name

A deep clean before handover is judged by somebody with a deposit in their hand, which changes what matters. Landlords in Budapest look at the oven, the shower screen, the grout and the state of the walls, in that order, and almost never at the floor you spent an hour on.

Photograph the flat when you leave it. Not because we expect an argument, but because the handover often happens days later, after the agency has shown the flat to three people. Our own report covers the day we worked; yours covers the day you handed the keys over. Between the two there is nothing left to discuss.

When booking one is worth it

Before a move-in, because nobody wants to inherit the last tenant's oven. Before a landlord's inspection, which in Budapest is usually about the kitchen and the bathroom and very little else. After a renovation, once the dust has settled and not on the day the builders leave. Once a year in a flat that is lived in hard, twice where there is a gas hob and somebody who actually cooks.

Common questions