Make This Useful

Updated · Make This Useful

Holiday house cleaning price calculator

HomeGuide prices deep cleaning at $0.11–$0.30 per square foot, and MagiClean in Seattle charges $75 per cleaner-hour for deep cleans with a $200 one-time minimum (both checked October 2026). A visit before holiday guests is a deep clean with a hard deadline, so price it from the rooms guests will use, not from the date on the calendar. Quote the cleanup after the party as a second visit and book both at once.

Price a holiday clean

Starting point: $50.00 per hour. Hourly, per cleaner (US guide): $25.00–$75.00 per cleaner-hour. Our midpoint of that range, rounded to cents. Rate is per worker, not per team. HomeGuide: house cleaning prices, checked 2026-10-15.

Extras, travel and minimum

Agree the rooms, kitchen appliances and guest areas before quoting. Count cleaner-hours across everyone working. Price a second visit separately so a pre-guest clean does not quietly include the after-party cleanup.

Job price before tax—

Enter cleaner-hours.

What should a pre-holiday house cleaning include?

The rooms guests see and use, at deep-clean standard: the guest bathroom down to the grout and the base of the toilet, the guest bedroom dusted with the bed made, kitchen counters, stovetop, cabinet fronts and the microwave, and the entry, living and dining rooms with baseboards and light fixtures. Rooms guests won’t enter can get an upkeep pass. Price the two levels separately so the host can choose.

What goes wrong is the open-ended “get the house ready for Thanksgiving.” The host pictures every room at deep-clean standard; you priced a regular visit. Walk the house or ask for photos, write the list room by room, and mark which rooms get the deep treatment. Put inside the oven and inside the fridge on the quote as named extras, since a host cooking a big meal often wants both and each takes real time.

How do you price a cleanup after a holiday party?

As its own visit, booked when the host books the clean before. The work is different: bags out, dishes and serving pieces, sticky floors, spills on upholstery, the guest bed stripped. You can’t see that mess in advance, so quote an allowance of cleaner-hours at your hourly rate, with the rooms in priority order; HomeGuide’s range is $25–$75 per cleaner-hour. The kitchen goes first, because that’s what the host faces the next morning.

Should you charge more for holiday house cleaning?

None of the cleaning price lists checked for this page publish a holiday surcharge, and a regular customer notices one. Price what the rush actually costs you instead: overtime, a weekend shift, an extra cleaner to hit a deadline. The money in the holiday season comes from filling every open slot at your full one-time price, not from a markup on the date.

The real limit is capacity. The days before Thanksgiving and Christmas fill first, and you can’t add hours to them. Book holiday deep cleans at your full one-time price, put the biggest homes early in the week, and take a deposit on one-time bookings; a cancellation the day before a holiday leaves a slot nobody else will book in time.

Example: a deep clean before guests, and the cleanup after

Two cleaners work three hours each before the guests arrive: six cleaner-hours. If a cleaner-hour costs you $30 with payroll taxes, the six hours cost $180. Supplies ($25) and the drive ($20) bring it to $225. At a 25% margin, $225 ÷ 0.75 = $300, or $50 per cleaner-hour, inside HomeGuide’s $25–$75 range. MagiClean’s Seattle rate would put the same six hours at $450.

The cleanup two days after the party is a second visit with its own drive: four cleaner-hours at $30 is $120, plus $20 for the drive and $10 for supplies, $150. At the same 25% margin, $150 ÷ 0.75 = $200. Quoted together, the host sees $500 for both visits before booking either.

Frequently asked questions

Should guest-room prep include changing the beds?

Say so either way on the quote. Stripping and remaking a guest bed with the host’s clean linens is quick and fits inside the guest-room price. Washing and drying the linens is laundry: it ties up the machine and brings you back to the room later. List it as an extra or leave it to the host.

What if the house is messier than the quote allowed for?

Call the host before you go past the allowance and give a choice: more time at your hourly rate, or the priority rooms finished and the rest left. Photos you take now help with next year’s quote. Broken glass, pet accidents and red wine on light carpet are outside a normal clean, so the quote should say if you handle them and at what price.

Should I offer a mid-stay clean when guests stay several nights?

Yes, as a short visit with its own line: bathrooms, fresh towels, the kitchen and a vacuum of the main rooms. Price it at your minimum or above, never folded into the after-party cleanup, which has enough work of its own. Book it with the other holiday visits so the date is held.

Sources