Size the home by rooms, not vibes
The raw inputs for a cleaning estimate are simple: square footage, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, and how the home is actually lived in. Bathrooms and kitchens take disproportionate time, so count them separately rather than averaging across the house. A three-bedroom home with one bathroom and a three-bedroom with three baths are different jobs at the same square footage.
Condition matters as much as size. Ask when the home was last professionally cleaned, whether there are pets, and whether anyone smokes indoors. Photos or a short walkthrough beat a phone description every time — 'pretty tidy' means something different to every customer.
Convert the home into labor hours
Cleaning is almost pure labor, so your estimate is hours times your rate. Track how long your own cleans actually take by home size and condition, and build your estimates from that history. If you have not worked out your rate from your real costs — wage, supplies, travel between jobs, overhead — do that first; how to calculate your hourly rate walks through it.
Do not forget the quiet time costs: driving between jobs, loading supplies, and the admin of booking and rescheduling. If those hours are not inside your rate, you are working them for free.
Price the first clean differently
The first visit to a new home is a deep clean whether the customer calls it that or not — baseboards, buildup, and everything that recurring visits then maintain. Price it as its own tier, typically quoted after you have seen the home, and explain why: you are resetting the baseline, and every visit after that holds it.
Recurring visits are where the business model lives. Weekly, biweekly, and monthly schedules take different effort per visit, so price each cadence on its own. Show the recurring price next to the first-clean price on the estimate so the customer sees the whole relationship, not just the biggest number.
Name the extras and the exclusions
The exclusion list does as much work as the price. 'Standard clean' means something specific to you and something vague to the customer until you write it down. The free estimate template shows where scope and exclusion lines sit in a clean document.
- Inside oven, inside fridge, and interior windows — classic add-ons, each with its own price
- Laundry, dishes, and bed-making if you offer them
- Post-construction or move-in/move-out cleans as their own service tier
- What a standard clean does NOT include: organizing, hoarding situations, biohazards, exterior windows
- Supplies: whose products and equipment are used, and any price difference
What the customer should see
A good cleaning estimate shows the first-clean price and the recurring price per cadence, what each visit includes, the extras with prices, and practical terms: access, cancellation window, and what happens on lockout days. Keep it to one page — this is a household decision, not a construction bid.
Cleaning customers decide quickly and often from their phone, so a clear PDF in their messages the same day they ask wins real business. EstimateBook drafts the line items from a voice description, you adjust the scope and prices, and the customer gets a document instead of a number in a text. Review the draft before it goes — your scope notes are the product.