End of tenancy cleaning after pets: hair, odours and your deposit
After a pet, the deposit risks are hair worked deep into carpets and upholstery, and odours that settle into soft furnishings. A standard clean lifts the surface. A deep carpet and upholstery clean is what pulls out embedded hair and freshens the fabric. Cover those, plus anything the inventory logged as damage, and you have handled what gets charged for.
Where pets actually cost deposits
Four things come up again and again. Hair ground into carpet pile, which a domestic vacuum genuinely will not lift. Hair and smell held in sofas, chairs and mattresses. Odour in a room that felt completely normal while you lived there, because you stopped noticing it in month two. And marks on skirting boards, door frames and the bottom of doors where a dog has leaned, scratched or shed against them for a year.
A clerk walking in cold notices all four. You will not, which is the real problem, so get somebody who has not been in the property to walk round with you before check-out.
What a standard clean does, and what pets need on top
A standard end of tenancy clean vacuums carpets, wipes down surfaces and cleans skirting and frames, which handles loose hair and most surface marks. Embedded hair and odour need extraction rather than suction: a deep carpet clean from £36 per room and an upholstery clean from £33 per item, with a sofa from £57 and a mattress from £35.
On a furnished one-bed with a cat, the realistic bill is the £207 base, plus £72 for carpet in two rooms, plus £57 for the sofa: £336. Add the oven at £77 if the inventory calls for it, as it almost certainly does.
An honest word on odours
Deep cleaning reduces most everyday pet smells, and in a lot of flats it removes them entirely. It is not magic. Heavy or long-standing odour, particularly urine that has gone through carpet into the underlay, does not always lift completely, because the source is below the layer anyone can treat. If that is your situation, say so when you book so the right treatment is planned rather than discovered on the day, and be prepared for the answer that the underlay is the problem.
Cleaning and damage are judged differently
Scratched doors, chewed skirting, a torn carpet or a gnawed windowsill are damage, not cleaning, and no treatment fixes them. They are assessed separately at check-out, and a deduction for damage has to account for fair wear and tear and cannot leave the landlord better off than they started. A five-year-old carpet damaged in year four is not worth a brand-new carpet. Our guide on cleaning deductions explains the limits, and knowing which category a charge falls into is often the difference between paying it and challenging it.
What to do before the check-out
Photograph the areas a pet used most, dated and in good light, once the property is empty and cleaned. Compare them honestly against your check-in photos. If there is damage, say so first rather than waiting for the report, because a proposed deduction you have already acknowledged tends to be smaller than one an agent finds. See what to photograph for the shots that get used in a dispute.
Booking it
Add the carpet and upholstery treatments to your end of tenancy clean so it all happens in one visit rather than two. The base clean starts from £156, with the pet add-ons on top, and every clean carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee (terms apply). Get a figure with an instant quote.
Quick answers
Will cleaning remove all the pet hair? Deep extraction removes most embedded hair that a vacuum leaves behind.
Will it get rid of the smell? It reduces most odours. Heavy, long-standing smells that have reached the underlay may not lift fully.
Are scratches a cleaning issue? No, that is damage, and it is judged separately from cleaning.
Can they charge me for a whole new carpet? Not usually. A deduction has to allow for the age and condition of what was there, not fund a replacement.
Sources
This article is general guidance for tenants, not legal advice. Keep your check-in inventory and dated photos as evidence.
Use our end of tenancy cleaning price calculator for a quick estimate, then request a confirmed quote for your postcode.