How Much to Charge for Window Cleaning in 2026

What a window cleaning quote needs to include

A text that just says "£25, every 4 weeks" leaves too much unsaid for a new customer. Cover these and there's nothing to renegotiate on the doorstep:

1. 1Property type and roughly how many windows/panes, or which price band it falls into.
2. 2Frequency — one-off, 4-weekly, 8-weekly, or on-request — stated plainly at the top.
3. 3Method: water-fed pole (pure water, cleaned from the ground) or traditional squeegee and ladder work.
4. 4What's covered — outside only, or inside and outside — and whether frames and sills are included.
5. 5Extras priced as their own line: conservatory glass roof, Velux/skylights, porch canopy, or a porch light.
6. 6Confirmation of your public liability insurance cover level.
7. 7Access notes: gated rear access, a side-gate code, parking restrictions, or dogs in the garden.
8. 8A first-clean premium if the property hasn't been done professionally before, shown separately from the ongoing rate.
9. 9Payment terms — card on the day, standing order, or an invoiced round — and when payment is collected.
10. 10What happens on a rained-off day: automatic reschedule to the next available slot, or a text to rebook.

Not every window cleaning job is the same job

Method, timing and where the property sits relative to the rest of your round change your real cost of delivery more than the number of windows does.

Per-pane vs per-property pricing — pick one and stay consistent

Per-pane pricing (roughly £1–£5 a window) suits one-off jobs, commercial shopfronts and anything oddly shaped — a conservatory with twelve small panes doesn't fit a flat "per-property" rate well. For a standard domestic round, a flat price per visit is simpler for you to quote and easier for a customer to remember and budget for — nobody wants to recount windows every time they text to ask the price.

Water-fed pole vs traditional squeegee changes your real cost of delivery

A telescopic water-fed pole system — pole, hose reel and a reverse-osmosis unit to produce pure water, usually tank-fed from the van — is a genuine upfront cost, but it lets you clean upper floors and awkward angles from ground level. HSE and the Federation of Window Cleaners jointly recommend this over ladder work wherever reasonably practicable under the Work at Height Regulations 2005, since almost every ladder fall happens because the ladder moves unexpectedly. That's a real safety and insurance argument for pricing multi-storey or awkward-access properties at the higher end of your range, even though the pole itself is often faster once you're set up.

Round density is where the real money is made or lost

Two houses at an identical headline price can be entirely different jobs once you account for travel. A new customer who joins an existing round on a street you already clean costs you almost nothing extra to add — it's worth a slightly friendlier price to fill the gap. A one-off, scattered job twenty minutes outside your usual patch is a different cost entirely, even at the same window count, and should carry a call-out premium or a minimum charge (commonly £12–£15) rather than your standard round rate.

First clean vs a maintained round

A property that's had regular professional cleans stays easy to maintain — dirt doesn't have time to bond to the glass or oxidise into uPVC frames. A first clean on a property that's gone a year or more without one takes real extra time on frames, sills and corners. Price it as a one-off premium (50–100% above your standard visit), then drop to your normal round rate once it's under control.

How to price the work

UK window cleaning pricing varies by region, access and method, but these ranges are a fair starting point for 2026:

• A regular outside clean of a terraced or semi-detached house (8–14 windows) on a 4 to 8-weekly round typically runs £20–£40 a visit; a detached home (15–20+ windows) is usually £35–£60.
• One-off or awkward jobs priced per pane usually run £1–£5 a window, with larger sashes, skylights and upper-floor panes at the top of that range.
• A conservatory glass roof typically adds £25–£30 to a one-off clean, or £45–£50 if the frames and gutters are included too; Velux or skylight windows are commonly £10–£20 a visit.
• A first clean on a property that hasn't been done professionally in a while typically costs 50–100% more than a maintained round, reflecting the extra time on frames and sills.
• Small commercial shopfronts often run £5–£15 a visit, medium offices £50–£150, and larger commercial buildings £100–£500+ depending on access and frequency.
• Public liability insurance for a self-employed window cleaner commonly starts from around £80 a year for £1m of cover, with many operators carrying £2m — build the real annual cost into your rate rather than treating it as a surprise.
• Set a minimum call-out charge, typically £12–£15, so a single small job doesn't cost you more in fuel and travel time than it earns.

A worked example

A 4-weekly domestic customer with a conservatory, priced the way described above:

£36 per 4-weekly visit, covering all outside windows and the conservatory glass roof at a 3-bed semi, cleaned with a water-fed pole from ground level. A one-off first-clean premium of £20 was charged on the initial visit to cover accumulated grime and frame detailing that won't be needed again once the round is established. Paid by contactless card on the day; automatically rescheduled to the next available slot if rained off.

Five details that get window cleaning quotes accepted faster

• State the method on the quote, not just the price. Water-fed pole (pure water, cleaned from ground level) versus traditional squeegee and ladder work — naming it shows you're working to HSE/Federation of Window Cleaners best practice under the Work at Height Regulations 2005, and it's a real reason your price differs from a cheaper "bucket and ladder" quote down the road.
• Separate the first clean from the ongoing round. A first-visit premium billed once, then a clearly lower recurring rate from visit two, means the customer isn't shocked by the opening price or confused when it drops the next time.
• Price extras as their own line, not folded into the round rate. Conservatory roofs, Velux windows and porch canopies aren't part of a standard clean — listing them separately lets a customer say yes to some and no to others, rather than assuming they're included or missing out because they never thought to ask.
• Put your public liability cover on the quote. A customer letting someone work with a pole above their driveway, conservatory or garden cares about this more than almost any other trade — naming your cover level does more to win the job than another five-star review.
• Make a repeat round as easy to reconfirm as a first booking. A customer on a 4-weekly cycle for two years deserves the same clean, reusable quote as a brand-new enquiry — not a text every spring asking "same as usual, or has anything changed?" that neither of you can find again later.

The fastest way to do all of this

Quoting a single new customer is easy enough to do from memory. A round of eighty houses, each on a slightly different cycle, with different extras and different first-clean histories, is a different job entirely — and it's exactly the kind of thing that ends up as a half-remembered price on a spreadsheet rather than something either of you can point back to.

This is what QuoteRocket is for. Describe the job in plain English — "4-weekly outside clean, water-fed pole, 3-bed semi, conservatory roof add-on, first-clean premium on visit one" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute, with a valid-until date and clear pricing. Your customer accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click, so you're not chasing round payments between streets.

Whichever way you produce the quote, the principle holds: price a first clean separately from the ongoing round, state your method and insurance cover, and treat a job that fills a gap in your existing round differently from one that doesn't.

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