How Much to Charge for a Carpet Cleaning Job in 2026

Carpet cleaning isn't part of a general clean — price the method, not just the room

A regular domestic clean (see how much to charge for a cleaning job) hoovers a carpet; it doesn't clean it. Proper carpet cleaning is its own specialist job with several genuinely different methods behind it — bonnet cleaning (a quick surface pass with a rotating pad, cheapest and fastest), dry compound (an absorbent powder worked in and vacuumed out, good for jobs that can't take downtime), encapsulation (a cleaning foam that crystallises dirt for easy vacuuming), and hot water extraction, often called steam cleaning, which forces hot water and detergent into the pile and extracts it straight back out. Hot water extraction is the deep-clean method most industry bodies — including the National Carpet Cleaners Association, whose BSI PAS 86:2009 code of practice sets the baseline for professional conduct in this trade — treat as the real job, and it's usually what a customer pictures when they book "a proper carpet clean" rather than a quick freshen-up.

What a carpet-cleaning quote needs to include

"Carpets cleaned — £80" tells a customer nothing about the method, the rooms covered, or whether stains are included. Cover these eleven things and the quote reads as a proper service:

1. 1Rooms or areas listed specifically, each with its approximate size, rather than a single "whole house" number.
2. 2Cleaning method named — hot water extraction (steam), dry compound, encapsulation or bonnet — since it changes both the price and how long the carpet takes to dry.
3. 3Current condition and soiling noted honestly — a general refresh, ground-in traffic lanes, or pet stains all mean different time on site and a different result you can promise.
4. 4Furniture moving stated plainly — light items moved as standard, heavy furniture (wardrobes, sofas, beds) an extra or left to the customer.
5. 5Stain and odour treatment priced as its own line, not folded silently into the headline number.
6. 6Stain protection offered as a named optional extra, not assumed.
7. 7Rugs priced separately from fitted carpet, by size — they're often a different job entirely, sometimes taken off-site.
8. 8Drying time stated — touch-dry in hours, fully dry within a day — so the customer knows when it's safe to put furniture back.
9. 9Where your water is coming from and where the wastewater is going, named on the quote — a live question in 2026, covered below.
10. 10Your public liability insurance cover, named on the quote.
11. 11Valid-until date and payment terms.

2026 UK pricing

Prices vary by room size, method and region, but these are a fair starting point for 2026:

• Single room or bedroom: £25–£45, rising to £30–£50 in London and the South East.
• Living room or through-lounge (15–25m²): £40–£70, rising to £50–£90 in London and the South East.
• Stairs and landing: £25–£45, rising to £35–£60 in London and the South East.
• Whole 2–3 bed home: £100–£250, rising to £130–£320 in London and the South East.
• Rugs, priced separately: small (up to 1m x 1.5m) £19–£27, medium (2m x 3m) £33–£56, large (3m x 4m+) £56–£85.
• By method, per room: bonnet £15–£25, dry compound £25–£40, encapsulation £30–£50, hot water extraction (steam) £35–£55.
• Stain or odour treatment, as an add-on: £10–£30 per area. Stain protection, as an add-on: £15–£30.
• Minimum call-out charge: £50–£70 outside London, £60–£100 within it and the South East.
• Typical time on site: 2–4 hours for a 3-bed home with hot water extraction. Carpets are touch-dry in 4–8 hours and fully dry within 24 hours — say so on the quote so furniture doesn't go back too soon.

The water rule most carpet cleaners haven't checked in 2026

Hot water extraction needs real volumes of clean water — a portable machine's tank typically holds 15–40 litres and often needs refilling mid-job, and a van with a truck-mount system needs a great deal more. It's common for mobile cleaners to top up from an outside tap at the customer's property using their own hose. As of mid-October 2026, nine water companies — Affinity Water, Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, South East Water, Southern Water, South Staffordshire Water, South West Water, Thames Water and Wessex Water — have an active hosepipe ban in place, between them covering a large share of England.

Several of those suppliers publish a list of trades exempt from their ban, on the basis that the hosepipe use is the trade itself — window cleaning, car valeting and path or patio cleaning are named on more than one supplier's list, and Thames Water explicitly allows a business to use a hose or jet washer for customer services like these. Carpet cleaning isn't on these published lists. That's not necessarily because it's banned — it's because the work itself happens indoors and doesn't use a hosepipe at all. Refilling a machine's water tank from an outside tap is a different question to the ones those exemption lists were written to answer, and it's one worth treating as unresolved rather than assumed. Ask your water company in writing before relying on a customer's tap mid-ban, and where you can, bring pre-filled water with you instead — it's also a detail worth putting on the quote, since it answers a question a growing number of customers are now asking before you're asked it.

The other side of the water question is where it goes once it's dirty. Extraction wastewater carries detergent, soil and, on pet jobs, organic waste, and it needs to go down a foul drain — a toilet, or a gully plumbed into the foul sewer — never onto the ground, into a garden, or down a street or driveway surface-water drain. A surface-water drain is built to carry rainwater straight to a local river or stream rather than through a treatment works, and discharging polluting matter into inland waters without the right permit is a regulated water discharge activity under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, enforced by the Environment Agency. It's a one-line check before you tip a tank on an unfamiliar job — and it's the kind of basic good practice the industry's own PAS 86 code of conduct expects as standard, not an afterthought.

A worked example

A 3-bed semi — hallway, stairs and landing, two bedrooms and a through-lounge — booked as a hot water extraction job, with a pet stain in the lounge and stain protection added on both bedrooms, and the cleaner's own water brought along rather than drawn from the customer's outside tap mid-ban:

£235 for the full ground floor and both bedrooms, with the pet-stain treatment and stain protection kept as their own priced lines rather than folded into the room rate — and the water line on the quote answering, before it's asked, where the water for the job came from.

Five details that get carpet-cleaning quotes accepted faster

• Name the cleaning method up front. "Hot water extraction — the deep-clean method the industry's own code of practice recommends" reads as a proper job, not a quick once-over with a machine.
• Say where your water's coming from mid-ban. "Water brought with us, no tap needed" answers a question before it's asked, and reassures a customer who's heard about hosepipe restrictions in the news.
• State the drying window clearly. "Touch-dry in 6 hours, don't put furniture back until tomorrow" heads off the single most common complaint in this trade — marks and indentations from furniture put back too soon.
• Treat stains and odours as named, priced lines. A vague "extra for problem areas" reads as a blank cheque. A priced line for pet-stain treatment reads as a job you've done before.
• Put your public liability cover in writing. A customer letting you move furniture and run wet machinery through their home notices when you've already answered the question they were too polite to ask.

The fastest way to do all of this

A single room is easy enough to price on the spot. A full round — hallway, stairs, two bedrooms and a lounge, with a stain treatment and a protection add-on, and a note about where the water came from — is exactly the kind of job that turns into a scribbled number on the doorstep instead of a document either of you can check back against.

This is what QuoteRocket is for. Describe the job in plain English — "hallway, stairs and landing plus two bedrooms and a lounge, hot water extraction, pet stain treatment in the lounge, stain protection on both bedrooms, own water brought" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute, with the stain treatment and protection kept as their own clearly labelled lines. Your customer accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click.

Whichever way you produce the quote, the principle holds: name the method, price stains and protection separately from the room rate, and say where your water's coming from before a customer has to wonder.

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