London Cleaning - by Northfields Clean - July 28, 2026

I run Northfields Clean, a cleaning company based in west London, and pricing is one of the questions I field almost daily. Should you pay by the hour, or agree a flat fee upfront? The honest answer is that it depends on the job, the property, and how experienced the cleaner is — but after years of pricing thousands of cleans, I have a strong opinion about which model actually serves the client best.

Why We Charge Flat Fees, Not Hourly Rates

At Northfields Clean, we price by property size and the type of clean requested, not by the hour. That’s a deliberate choice.

With hourly pricing, clients usually book a fixed amount of time. When that time runs out, the cleaner is under pressure to finish, whether or not the job is actually done to standard. Most of the time, it doesn’t quite happen within the window, and you end up with an unhappy client and a half-finished job.

With a flat fee, the cleaner isn’t racing a clock. They can work to the standard the job actually requires, and finish properly. In our experience, that consistently leads to better results and happier clients.

The Guarantee That Comes With Flat Fee (and Disappears With Hourly)

One thing most people don’t realise: flat fee pricing at Northfields Clean comes with a guarantee. If the work isn’t done to standard, the cleaner comes back within a week to finish it, at no extra cost.

That guarantee doesn’t apply to hourly bookings. If a client insists on a fixed time limit, we can’t promise the job will be fully complete within that window, so the completion guarantee doesn’t hold. You’re trading a bit of price certainty for the risk of an unfinished job.

What Actually Happens When Hourly Pricing Falls Short

This isn’t theoretical. I’ve seen it play out the same way more than once.

A common example: a client books the minimum three hours for a three-bedroom house, then adds extras like the oven, fridge, and cabinets. Three hours simply isn’t enough time for all of that. The cleaner has to prioritise what the client cares about most and leave the rest, and the client ends up booking a second session to finish the job. In cases like this, the total cost of two hourly sessions often works out close to, or more than, what a flat fee would have cost in the first place, with none of the stress.

I’ve had a more extreme version of this too. A client booked a minimum three-hour hourly clean for an old apartment that hadn’t been lived in for years. I was upfront that three hours, even with two cleaners, likely wouldn’t get the property fully clean given the state it was in. The client insisted anyway. Predictably, the property wasn’t finished, and they had to book a second three-hour session to complete it. That ended up costing more than a flat fee for the same size property would have, when in reality the job only needed another half hour to an hour to be done properly.

How We Actually Calculate a Flat Fee

London has an advantage here that a lot of people don’t think about: housing stock is fairly standardised. A three-bedroom Victorian or 1930s house tends to have a similar footprint to another of the same era and bedroom count. Two bathrooms, a reception room, a kitchen, probably a dining room — the layout is predictable.

That means we can price primarily on bedrooms and bathrooms, because we already have a good sense of how long a property of that shape and size will take to clean properly. It’s a system that’s served us well, and it’s part of why we’re comfortable offering a completion guarantee on flat fee work.

When Hourly Pricing Actually Makes Sense

I don’t think flat fee is right for everyone, and it’s worth being upfront about that.

Landlords and Airbnb hosts who’ve been booking cleaners for years often know exactly how long a job takes. If a landlord tells us they want three hours for a one-bedroom deep clean, that’s usually a realistic, well-informed estimate, and hourly pricing works well for them. They’ve built up the experience to price their own jobs accurately.

Where it doesn’t work as well is with homeowners who aren’t sure how long their clean should take. In that situation, a flat fee removes the guesswork, and you get the completion guarantee as a safety net if the estimate was off.

Why Experience Changes the Real Value of an Hourly Rate

Here’s something worth thinking about if you’re comparing hourly quotes: a more experienced cleaner may charge a higher hourly rate, but they’ll often get significantly more done in that time, to a higher standard, than a less experienced cleaner charging less.

If you compare two hourly quotes on price alone, without factoring in speed and quality, you can end up paying a cheaper hourly rate for a cleaner who takes far longer to reach the same standard as a pricier, faster one — and the total cost, and your time, can work out worse. Flat fee sidesteps this entirely, because you’re paying for a result, not a duration. A fast, experienced cleaner effectively earns a higher hourly rate under a flat fee, and that’s fair — they’re delivering the same standard in less time.

Hidden Costs to Watch For in Either Model

A few things catch people out when they’re comparing hourly and flat fee quotes side by side.

Supplies — most cleaning companies include supplies in both hourly and flat fee pricing. Independent cleaners often don’t, and may expect you to provide your own without telling you upfront. Always confirm this before booking, so you’re not scrambling on the day.
Insurance, DBS checks, and reference checks — cleaning companies typically carry these costs as standard. Independent contractors may not, which is part of why rates between the two can differ.
Minimum call-out charges and cancellation fees — always worth asking about directly, since they’re rarely advertised upfront.

The One Question to Ask Before Comparing Quotes

Whenever you’re given a rate, ask exactly what’s included in it. Don’t stop at one quote — get at least three, so you can compare like for like on what’s actually covered and what’s excluded, supplies included or not.

Have a rough sense of market rate before you start comparing, and always ask questions. A cheap-looking hourly rate can hide a lot of gaps that only become obvious once the cleaner is already in your home.

How to Compare a Flat Fee to an Hourly Rate Fairly

If you want to sanity-check whether a flat fee is good value, ask the company how long the job is likely to take. Most companies can give you a realistic average, even with some variation depending on the cleaner. Divide the flat fee by that estimate, and you’ll have a rough hourly equivalent you can compare against the standard rate in your area.

That one calculation gives you real confidence that you’re being quoted fairly, whichever pricing model you end up choosing.