Carpet cleaning in Dalston is counted by the room and by the flight, so a bedroom is £36, a living room £43, a front and back room opened into one £61, and a flight of stairs £41, with each landing £9 on top. Rugs are £35 up to 3 sq m and £51 over it. Hot water extraction, with a pre-spray first and a softened rinse to finish.
| What is being cleaned | Price |
|---|---|
| Bedroom | £36 |
| Living room | £43 |
| Through lounge | £61 |
| Stairs, per flight | £41 |
| Rug up to 3 sq m | £35 |
| Rug over 3 sq m | £51 |
Counting rooms instead of measuring metres
Charging by the square metre sounds like the fairer method until you try it on a Dalston conversion. A bedroom in a chopped-up Victorian terrace is hardly ever a rectangle. There is a chimney breast, a fitted cupboard in one alcove, a bed that gets shifted twice, and a strip of landing outside the door that wants doing while the hose is out. Counting rooms means the figure exists before anybody unrolls a tape. A bedroom is £36 whether it measures eight metres or fourteen. A carpeted hall has its own price of £22 and a separate landing £9, since neither takes long sweeps of the wand and both want the small tool worked slowly along every edge.
What the machine actually does
The machine pushes heated solution down into the pile and draws it straight back out, soil and all. The pile is pre-sprayed, anything greasy gets worked by hand, then the wand goes across in overlapping wet passes with a dry pass following each one. It is slower than the bonnet pad you see going round an office at seven in the morning. It also lifts the soil out of the property instead of pushing it further down the tuft.
The rinse gets softened, because the water here is hard
Thames Water supplies this part of Hackney hard, and that matters more in a carpet than people expect. Rinse a pale wool pile with raw tap water and it dries with a faint chalky bloom sitting in it, which looks like the clean did not work when what you are seeing is mineral. The rinse pass is softened and neutralised on every job and nothing is added to the bill for it. On anything that has been cleaned before by somebody else, that pass also lifts the detergent residue left behind, which is usually why a carpet resoils quickly after a cheap clean.
Stairs are the line people forget
A converted terrace off Kingsland Road commonly has one flight inside your own front door, and a good many gained a second when the loft went in. Each flight is £41, with the landing a further £9, and stairs cost that because every riser, nosing and spindle is hand work. Run the arithmetic on a two bedroom flat that has taken the loft. Bedrooms £72. Hall £22. Through lounge £61. Two flights £82. Two landings £18. That is £255 for the whole floor area. Communal stairs in a converted house belong to the freeholder rather than to your tenancy, so they are not on your bill unless you specifically ask for them. Up in the four storey terraces around Stoke Newington three flights and three landings is normal and the stairs on their own reach £150.
Rugs get lifted out and counted on their own
A rug lying on fitted carpet is picked up, cleaned as its own item at £35 or £51 depending on which side of 3 sq m it falls, and the floor underneath is done as part of the room. It never disappears into the room rate, because the two need different tools and the rug is usually the dirtier of the pair. Loose rugs on bare boards are the standard arrangement in the De Beauvoir villas and in plenty of the warehouse flats, so say at the booking whether the floor is fitted or boarded. It changes the quote and it changes the length of the slot.
Getting the kit to a fourth floor flat
Reaching the carpet is half the job in E8. Steep staircases with a half-turn, no lift and a hall too narrow to swing a wand in are standard along Dalston Lane, so everything is carried up a flight at a time and the slot allows for the climb. The warehouse conversions behind the high street run to three or four floors with a goods lift that is frequently locked at weekends. Dalston Square and the newer blocks mean a concierge, a visitor name and sometimes a lift that has to be reserved for a machine. On the estates it is door entry and a working lift, which is the easiest of the lot. Tell us the floor and the way in when you book. It lengthens the slot rather than the invoice.
Drying, and what to do with the furniture
Sock-walkable inside a couple of hours. Dry all the way down by the end of the day. Cold weather with the sash windows painted shut stretches that, and heating on low with one window cracked open does considerably more than standing a fan in the doorway, because airflow is the whole trick. Sofas, beds and chairs get moved and set back down on pads. Wardrobes stay where they are and so does a wall of electronics. Anything small on the floor is better lifted out of the way before we arrive: lamps, the laundry basket, the box of cables under the desk.
Spots, spills and the grey lines by the skirting
Fresh spills and walkway marks lift with a pre-spray worked in by hand before the wand goes over. Pet accidents get an enzyme treatment, and the grey filtration lines along skirtings and under doors come up noticeably with a slow edge pass. Each mark gets a genuine go and you see the result while we are still in the room.
Booking carpets with something else
One off work starts from £67, so a second room brings a lone bedroom back to its £36 rate. Pairing work up tends to save money for a second reason as well. While the oven parts soak, the extraction machine can be going over the bedrooms, so the two jobs overlap instead of queueing behind one another. Where the floors are only part of the trouble, a team deep clean from £186 is the better booking, and where a tenancy is ending the move-out band from £156 sits over the top with the carpets counted on at the lower move-out scale, £29 a bedroom and £35 a flight. Every figure is on the prices page, and the line is answered from 8am to 7pm daily on 020 8077 6967.
Questions we get asked
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Dalston?
£36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £61 for a through lounge and £41 for a flight of stairs, with the landing charged at £9 on top. Rugs are £35 up to 3 sq m and £51 over. Two bedrooms and a through lounge together come to £133.
Is there a minimum charge for one room?
One off work has to reach £67, so a lone bedroom carpet bills at that rather than at £36. Put two rooms in the same visit and the floor is met once between them, which brings the bedroom back to £36.
How long do the carpets take to dry?
Socks after a couple of hours, and the pile dry right down by the end of the day. Heating on low with a window ajar helps more than anything else. A cold flat with the sashes painted shut is the slowest case.
Can you get a machine up to a fourth floor warehouse flat?
Yes. Only the hose and the wand travel up, since the unit itself never leaves the kerb, which is how the Dalston Lane staircases and the conversions above the high street get worked. Say which floor you are on and whether the goods lift is open.
Do you move the furniture?
Sofas, beds and chairs are moved and put back on protective pads. Wardrobes stay full and electronics stay plugged in. Lifting the small things off the floor before we arrive saves time you are paying for.
Why does my carpet look chalky after a previous clean?
Usually hard water left in the pile, or detergent residue from a clean that was not rinsed out. Thames Water runs hard across Hackney, so our rinse pass is softened and neutralised at no extra charge and it lifts old residue with it.
Prefer the phone? 020 8077 6967, 8am to 7pm.