How often windows need cleaning in Budapest

City dust works faster than you expect

A flat facing Rákóczi út or the Nagykörút loses the clarity of its glass within a month. Traffic soot arrives as an even film rather than as spots, so you notice it as light instead of as dirt: the room dims while the window looks the same as it did in May. Move to the courtyard side of that same building and the glass holds for a season.

Winter is worse than summer in the inner districts. Cold air settles in the Danube basin and keeps whatever is in it down at street level, so the heating months put more on a fourth-floor window than July ever does. Spring then adds pollen, which is sticky and bakes hard onto a warm pane.

What sets the interval

• Flat on a main road, street side: every four to six weeks before the view is affected
• Same building, courtyard side: two or three times a year
• Shop window at street level: monthly, because customers read it as how the place is run
• Office glazing on Váci út: quarterly at minimum, more often where there is no external access
• Buda hillside, districts II and XII: twice a year, with the pollen weeks deciding when

What you will do yourself

Inside glass, and anything you can reach standing on the floor, is your job and worth doing properly. Use a squeegee rather than a cloth. Start with the frame: dirt off a frame runs down onto glass you have already finished, and the other order means doing the pane twice.

Do not start in direct sun. The water evaporates before the blade reaches the bottom of the pane, and the streaks you are left with came from that, not from the product. East-facing windows early, west-facing ones late in the afternoon.

A bucket of warm water with a few drops of washing-up liquid beats most sprays. Sprays leave a film, and the next rain shows you exactly where it is.

What we do that you cannot

• Outside glass above the first floor, with the ladder work and the insurance that goes with it
• Frames, sills and the drainage channels along the bottom of the sash, where the water stands
• Balcony glazing and glass railings, both faces
• Blinds and shutters taken down, washed and rehung
• Limescale treatment on glass that has been rained on for years
• A photo report at the end, as on every job we do

What no amount of washing brings back

Old limescale has already etched the glass. Hard water dries on the pane, the mineral stays behind, and over years it eats a shallow pattern into the surface. What you are looking at by then is the surface itself, not a deposit sitting on it. Some of it polishes out with a fine abrasive. On a pane that is far gone the honest answer is new glass.

The same goes for paint spatter left over from a renovation a year ago, and for scratches from a previous cleaner who used a blade dry. We tell you which of those we are looking at before we start rather than after.

Before we arrive

Clear the sills. Everything on them has to be moved, and we would rather you moved your own plants and picture frames than have us do it. If the windows open onto a shared courtyard walkway, say so: the ladder has to stand somewhere, and in a Budapest courtyard house that is often on the neighbours' half of it. If a window has not been opened in years, tell us on the phone, because a sash that will not open changes what we can reach from inside.

Common questions