How Much Does Carpet Cleaning Cost in the UK?

Professional carpet cleaning in the UK costs £25 to £75 per room in 2026, or £2 to £4 per square metre. A three-bedroom house usually lands between £180 and £280. Most firms also apply a minimum charge of £60 to £90, which is the bit that catches people out on single room jobs.

Those numbers cover the majority of quotes. They also hide a lot.

Two companies can walk into the same three-bedroom semi and come back with £140 and £320, and both can be perfectly honest. The gap sits in three places: the cleaning method, what the headline price includes, and how each firm decides what counts as a room.

Carpet Cleaning Cost at a Glance

What you’re pricing	Typical UK cost in 2026
Single room	£25 to £75
Stairs and landing	£35 to £55
Two bedroom house	£130 to £190
Three bedroom house	£180 to £280
Four bedroom house	£280 to £420
Per square metre	£2 to £4
Minimum call out charge	£60 to £90
Commercial, per square metre	£2 to £4 plus VAT
Rug cleaning	£30 to £150

Why the Average Price Isn’t Much Help

You’ll see £250 quoted as the UK average. It’s roughly right for a whole house and close to useless for budgeting, because hardly anyone actually pays it.

Small jobs sit underneath and get dragged up by minimum charges. Neglected properties sit well above. What you want instead is the per room figure, corrected for how you’re being charged in the first place.

The Three Ways Carpet Cleaners Price a Job

Comparing two quotes priced on different models is where most people go wrong, because £30 per room and £3 per square metre can produce totals £100 apart in the same house.

Per Room, and the Size Cap Nobody Mentions

Per room is the standard domestic model. Budget £25 to £75, with £30 to £50 covering most ordinary bedrooms and lounges.

The catch is size. Almost every per room price assumes a room of about 12 to 16 square metres. Go bigger and it’s either charged as two rooms or hit with a supplement, and an open plan kitchen diner gets counted as several rooms rather than one. Ask what the cap is before you agree anything.

Per Square Metre

Square metre pricing runs £1.50 to £4 for domestic work, with £2 to £3 covering most jobs. Larger houses tend to be quoted this way, and it’s the default for commercial premises.

It’s the fairer model. You pay for the floor you have, and there’s no argument about definitions. The trade off is that you need to measure your own floors to check the number.

Per Square Foot

A few firms quote per square foot, usually ones working off American equipment pricing. UK rates land at £0.19 to £0.37 per square foot.

One square metre is 10.76 square feet, so multiply any square foot price by 10.76 to compare it. A quote of £0.25 per square foot is £2.69 per square metre, which is normal.

The Minimum Call Out Charge

Nearly every carpet cleaner has one, and it’s almost never on the price page. Domestic minimums sit at £60 to £90. Commercial minimums run £120 to £200.

This is the most common source of “but your website said thirty pounds” phone calls in the trade. If you want one bedroom done and the advertised rate is £30, you’ll still pay the minimum, because the van, the machine, the drive out and the setup all happen whether there’s one room or six.

Carpet Cleaning Prices Per Room

Room	Typical size	Cost
Small bedroom	10 to 12 m²	£25 to £35
Double bedroom	14 to 16 m²	£35 to £45
Large or master bedroom	18 to 22 m²	£45 to £60
Living room	16 to 20 m²	£35 to £55
Dining room	12 to 16 m²	£30 to £45
Hallway	6 to 10 m²	£20 to £35
Stairs and landing	12 to 16 m²	£35 to £55
Open plan living and dining	30 to 40 m²	£75 to £110

Bedrooms are the cheapest rooms in the house. Light traffic, less furniture, and even soiling rather than concentrated wear. A standard double comes in at £35 to £45, and what pushes it up is furniture, since some firms absorb the moving and others bill it.

Living rooms take longer than their floor area suggests. They pick up the heaviest soiling of anywhere except the hallway, and they’re the room most likely to need a pre spray and a slower second pass. Reckon on £35 to £55, more with a large corner sofa in the way.

Stairs are the most under quoted item in the industry. A flight has roughly the surface area of a small bedroom but takes two to three times as long, because the wand has to be worked by hand across every tread and riser instead of pushed across a flat floor. Expect £35 to £55 with the landing. If a whole house quote looks suspiciously cheap, check the stairs are actually in it.

Hallways are small but filthy, so most firms price them at £20 to £35 rather than as a full room. Open plan is the opposite problem: it’s priced by area, so a kitchen diner running into a lounge at 36 m² is charged as about two and a half rooms.

What Actually Counts as One Room

There’s no industry standard, which is exactly why quotes vary. Before agreeing a per room rate, get three answers in writing: the maximum size covered, whether stairs count as a room, and whether a box room or walk in wardrobe is charged separately.

Carpet Cleaning Cost by House Size

Whole house bookings beat the per room rate, because the setup only happens once.

Property	Approximate carpet area	Cost
One bedroom flat	35 to 50 m²	£90 to £140
Two bedroom house	55 to 70 m²	£130 to £190
Three bedroom house	80 to 100 m²	£180 to £280
Four bedroom house	120 to 150 m²	£280 to £420
Five bedroom or detached	160 m² plus	£400 to £600

One bedroom flat. Often only two or three carpeted areas once the tiled kitchen and bathroom come out, so £90 to £140. Access moves the number, and third floor with no lift means hoses up the stairwell.

Two bedroom house. £130 to £190 covers bedrooms, stairs, landing and living room. The most requested job size in the country, and where booking the whole house starts beating booking room by room.

Three bedroom house. £180 to £280 for a full extraction clean across 80 to 100 m². Expect the top of that range with pets, pale carpets, or carpets untouched for five years.

Four bedroom and up. £280 to £420. Above four bedrooms most firms switch to square metres, because room count stops predicting area reliably.

Carpet Cleaning Price List for 2026

Service	Price
Single room, standard	£30 to £50
Single room, large	£50 to £75
Stairs and landing	£35 to £55
Hallway	£20 to £35
Three room package	£95 to £150
Whole house, three bedroom	£180 to £280
Per square metre, domestic	£2 to £4
Per square metre, commercial	£2 to £4 plus VAT
Minimum call out, domestic	£60 to £90
Stain protector	£15 to £30 per room
Deodouriser	£10 to £20 per room
Pet enzyme treatment	£25 to £60 per area
Rug cleaning	£30 to £150
Machine hire, per day	£30 to £50

Carpet Cleaning Costs by Method

Method affects price more than almost anything else, and the cheapest option isn’t automatically the wrong one.

Hot Water Extraction, or Steam Cleaning

Hot water extraction pushes heated solution into the pile under pressure and immediately vacuums it back out with the loosened soil. It reaches deeper than anything else, and it’s the method most carpet manufacturers specify to keep a warranty valid.

£35 to £55 per room. Drying takes four to eight hours with decent ventilation.

There’s no steam involved, despite the name. The water is hot, not vaporised, which is why the trade calls it extraction. The benefits of steam carpet cleaning are real, but the label is a leftover.

Dry Compound Cleaning

An absorbent powder is worked into the pile with a counter rotating brush, left to bind with the soil, then vacuumed away.

£25 to £40 per room. Walkable almost straight away.

The sensible pick for offices that can’t shut, ground floor flats with poor airflow, and any carpet where over wetting is a genuine risk. It won’t reach as far down the pile as extraction.

Foam Encapsulation

A polymer foam crystallises around soil particles as it dries, then comes up with a normal vacuum, often the next day.

£28 to £40 per room. Dry in one to two hours.

Far less residue than the old shampoo methods, and it’s the backbone of most commercial maintenance programmes.

Bonnet Cleaning

An absorbent pad spun across the carpet with a rotary machine. It cleans the top of the pile and nothing below it.

£15 to £25 per room.

A refresh rather than a clean. It has a place in hotel corridors between deeper cleans. For a one off clean at home, it’s rarely what you want.

Which Method Is Worth Paying More For

For a domestic one off, hot water extraction earns its extra £10 to £20 per room in most cases, because it’s the only method that reaches the base of the pile where the bulk of the soil sits.

The exceptions are wool with unstable dyes, properties that can’t cope with the drying time, and commercial floors already on a regular schedule.

How Much Does Carpet Deep Cleaning Cost?

Carpet deep cleaning costs £35 to £70 per room, or £200 to £350 for a three bedroom house. That’s typically 20 to 40 per cent above a standard clean.

Nothing formally separates the two, which is worth knowing before paying extra for the word. In practice a deep clean means a pre spray left to dwell longer, mechanical agitation before extraction, hotter water, and a slower second pass. That work is real and it shows on neglected carpets. But if the carpet was cleaned within the last eighteen months, standard extraction gets it to the same place.

Cost to Shampoo a Carpet

Shampooing costs £25 to £45 per room, though the word is used loosely now. True rotary shampooing has largely gone, because the old detergents left a tacky residue that attracted soil and had carpets looking dirty again within weeks. Encapsulation replaced it. If someone quotes for shampooing, ask what they actually use.

Commercial Carpet Cleaning Prices

Commercial carpet cleaning costs £2 to £4 per square metre plus VAT, with a minimum charge of £120 to £200. Larger contracts and regular schedules bring the rate down.

Offices. £2 to £3.50 per m² for a one off, so a 200 m² office sits around £400 to £700 plus VAT. Desks are the main variable, since cleaning around fixed workstations is far slower than cleaning a cleared floor. Most contractors quote furniture handling separately or ask that the space is emptied first.

Pubs, restaurants and hotels. The most heavily soiled commercial floors in the country, at £3 to £5 per m². Hotel bedrooms are usually priced per room at £20 to £40, with corridors charged by area.

Out of hours and access. Working outside business hours adds 15 to 30 per cent, overnight at the top end. No goods lift, restricted parking and no accessible water supply all attract supplements, because they add setup time the per metre rate doesn’t cover.

Contracts versus one off cleans. A planned maintenance programme typically cuts the square metre rate by 12 to 25 per cent. A carpet cleaned quarterly never gets badly soiled, so every visit is quicker and low moisture methods do the job. Our office carpet cleaning service page covers how contracts are structured.

VAT. Commercial quotes exclude it, so add 20 per cent before comparing. Domestic prices are normally inclusive, and plenty of smaller firms operate below the VAT registration threshold and don’t charge it at all. That’s a legitimate reason a sole trader undercuts a larger company on identical work.

Rug Cleaning Costs

Rug cleaning runs £30 to £150 depending on size, fibre, and whether it’s cleaned in your home or taken away.

On site cleaning costs £30 to £70 and happens alongside your carpets using the same equipment. Off site specialist cleaning costs £70 to £250 and involves collection, a controlled wash and controlled drying, usually over seven to fourteen days.

Wool, silk, Persian and Oriental rugs need the specialist route at £15 to £40 per square metre, because natural dyes bleed if the pH, water temperature or drying conditions are wrong, and colour run doesn’t come back. Full size by size pricing is in our professional rug cleaning cost guide.

What Changes the Price

Two houses that look identical from the street can be quoted £100 apart.

Carpet fibre. Polypropylene is cheapest to clean, since it resists staining and tolerates hot water and stronger detergents. Nylon and polyester sit in the middle. Wool costs 20 to 40 per cent more because it needs pH neutral solutions, cooler water and controlled moisture to avoid shrinkage. Sisal, jute and seagrass are dry method only and priced as specialist work. Deep pile and shag cost more than short twist, for the obvious reason.

How dirty it actually is. The biggest single variable in most quotes. A carpet cleaned yearly needs one pass. A carpet untouched for eight years needs a pre spray, dwell time, agitation and often two extraction passes, which doubles the labour on the same floor area. Traffic lane greying is the usual sign it’s crossed from routine into rescue.

Pet stains and odours. Adds £25 to £60 per affected area, and it’s the cost people underestimate most. Surface cleaning does not fix urine odour, because urine goes through the backing into the underlay and often the floorboards, and the smell returns the moment humidity rises. Doing it properly means an enzyme product applied to the subfloor, sometimes with underlay lifted. If a quote for pet odour looks cheap, it’s treating the surface. Our guide to pet stain and odour removal covers what’s involved.

Access. Truck mounted machines run from the van and need it within about 30 metres. Flats above the second floor, permit only parking and houses with no outside tap all add setup time, and firms price it in.

Where you live.

Region	Typical cost per room
London and the South East	£50 to £85
South West and East of England	£35 to £60
Midlands	£30 to £50
North of England	£28 to £45
Wales	£28 to £45
Scotland	£30 to £50
Northern Ireland	£25 to £45

The Extras Most Quotes Leave Out

The headline price is rarely the final bill.

Moving furniture. Some firms include light items, some charge £10 to £30 per room, and almost none will move anything with electronics or glass inside. Beds and large wardrobes are usually excluded outright. Clearing what you can yourself keeps this off the invoice, and there’s a short list of what helps in our guide to preparing your home for professional cleaning.

Stain protector. £15 to £30 per room. A fluorochemical treatment applied after cleaning so spills bead instead of soaking in. It works, but vacuuming and foot traffic wear it off within twelve to eighteen months. Worth it on new carpets and pale colours, hard to justify on a carpet that’s nearly done.

Deodouriser and enzyme treatment. Deodouriser costs £10 to £20 per room and masks odour. Enzyme treatment costs £25 to £60 and destroys what’s causing it. These are not the same product, and paying for the first when you needed the second is a common mistake.

Individual stains. Red wine, ink, blood, coffee and pet accidents are quoted separately at £10 to £40 each, because each needs targeted chemistry and time. Anything that has bleached or re dyed the fibre rather than sitting on top of it is permanent. Our page on professional stain removal covers what’s realistically treatable.

Drying equipment. Air movers and dehumidifiers cost £20 to £50 per visit and cut drying from six hours to roughly two. Worth it with a deadline, poor ventilation, or cleaning in January with no option to open windows. There are also things you can do yourself to dry carpet faster.

Is Your Quote Fair?

A fair UK quote in 2026 sits between £25 and £75 per room, or £2 to £4 per square metre, adjusted for region and the state of the carpets. Anything well outside that deserves a question, in either direction.

When a Quote Is Too Cheap

£15 per room, or “whole house for £79”, usually means one of three things. The method is bonnet cleaning, so you’re paying for a surface pass. Or the stairs, hallway and landing aren’t in it and will appear on the day. Or it’s a door opener, and the real price arrives once the technician is standing in your living room.

Other things worth checking: no public liability insurance, no fixed address, cash only, and pressure to book on the spot. A legitimate firm gives you a written quote and lets you think about it. Our checklist on what to look for in a cleaning company goes through the rest.

When a Higher Price Is Justified

Above the normal range is reasonable with wool or natural fibre, real pet contamination, carpets untouched for years, awkward access, or London and South East overheads.

It’s also fair when the firm is doing more. Someone who moves furniture, pre treats stains individually, runs truck mounted equipment and comes back to check the result is not selling the same thing as someone pushing a portable across the open floor.

Five Questions Before You Book

1. Which method are you using, and why that one for my carpets?
2. What’s your minimum charge, and does my job reach it?
3. Are the stairs, landing and hallway inside this price?
4. What would push this above the quoted figure once you’re here?
5. Are you insured, and are you NCCA or WoolSafe accredited?

Questions three and four will tell you more about the final bill than the headline number ever does.

DIY Versus Professional

Machine hire costs £30 to £50 per day plus £15 to £25 for solution. Buying a domestic cleaner costs £90 to £300. Professional cleaning is £25 to £75 per room.

For a three bedroom house, hiring works out at £50 to £75 all in, against £180 to £280 done professionally. Buy your own and it pays for itself against hire in two to three years if you clean twice a year.

Where DIY costs you more is vacuum lift. Hire machines produce a fraction of what a professional unit does, and that single difference causes all three of the usual problems. Carpets stay wet for 24 to 48 hours instead of four to eight. Detergent residue stays in the pile, so the carpet resoils faster and can look worse in a month than before you started. And on badly stained carpets the soil gets loosened but not fully removed, so it wicks back to the surface as things dry.

For maintaining carpets already in reasonable shape, DIY is a sound call. For heavy soiling, pets or wool, professional works out cheaper.

Cheaper to Clean or Replace?

Cleaning costs roughly a tenth of replacement. £25 to £75 per room against £275 to £625 for new carpet fitted with underlay.

Option	Cost per room	Lifespan gained
Professional clean	£25 to £75	12 to 24 months
New mid range carpet, fitted	£275 to £625	8 to 12 years

Regular cleaning also stretches what you already have, because the grit trapped at the base of the pile cuts the fibres every time somebody walks over it. That’s why neglected carpets fail in the traffic lanes first, and why routine care keeps carpet looking new for considerably longer.

Cleaning won’t fix pile that’s been walked flat, backing that has delaminated and left the carpet rippling, fibre that’s been bleached rather than soiled, or pet contamination that’s reached the subfloor across several rooms. A decent cleaner will tell you when replacing is the better call.

End of Tenancy Carpet Cleaning

End of tenancy carpet cleaning costs £90 to £250 for a typical rental, in line with standard domestic pricing. Most tenants book the whole property at once and pick up the multi room rate.

Worth knowing if you rent in England: under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, a landlord cannot require you to pay for professional cleaning as a blanket condition of the tenancy. What you do owe is the property in the condition recorded at check in, allowing for fair wear and tear.

In practice, paying £150 for a documented clean tends to be cheaper than arguing over a £250 deduction. Keep the receipt. For the wider picture, see our end of tenancy cleaning cost guide.

How to Bring the Cost Down

Book multiple rooms in one visit, since setup is charged once no matter how many rooms follow. Move the furniture yourself. Go midweek and avoid the summer and pre Christmas peaks, when firms have less room to move on price. Clean before the carpets get bad, because a routine clean is always cheaper than a rescue. And vacuum properly beforehand, which lifts the dry soil and lets the cleaner spend their time on what actually needs the machine.

What doesn’t work is choosing on headline price alone. The cheapest quote is regularly the most expensive outcome once the extras land.

Want a straight answer for your own property? We clean carpets across Nottingham and the surrounding area, and every quote is confirmed in writing before anyone starts. See our professional carpet cleaning service for what’s included.

Frequently Asked Questions