End of Tenancy Cleaning in Kensington & Chelsea

The postcode premium we do not add in SW3 or W8

One national service quotes around £313 for a typical end of tenancy clean in this borough, because firms add a premium for a Kensington and Chelsea address. We do not. A studio starts at £156, a one-bed at £207, a two-bed at £243, a three-bed at £339 and a four-bed at £425, which is the same band we charge everywhere else we cover.

The reasoning is dull rather than generous. Hours are set by the property, not the postcode, and a two-bed mansion flat off Sloane Avenue takes about as long as a two-bed anywhere once the oven is out on the floor. Where K&C genuinely costs more time is stone and period detail, and that is a conversation about hours before you book rather than a loading applied afterwards.

Same price as the rest of London.

Marble bathrooms will not take an acid descaler

A good number of RBKC bathrooms are marble or another natural stone, and that changes the descaling job completely. The acid descaler you would use on an ordinary tiled bathroom etches stone, and an etched marble surround is a far bigger deduction than the limescale ever was. So it comes off with stone-safe products and more time on the clock.

The same caution applies to the brassware in some of the older mansion blocks, where an unlacquered finish dulls if it meets the wrong bottle. If you are not sure what your bathroom is made of, send a photo with the postcode. It takes a minute and it decides how we work.

Cornices, sash windows and parquet in the stucco terraces

Kensington and Chelsea is high-end period stock: white stucco-fronted terraces, listed townhouse conversions, mansion blocks and mews houses, with pockets of ex-council around Notting Dale and World’s End. Deposits here turn on detail. Cornicing and ceiling roses hold dust that only shows when somebody stands on a stool, sash windows need the runners and the meeting rails done properly, and a lot of the floors are parquet or hardwood rather than carpet.

Wood floors are cleaned and buffed, never steamed. Steam lifts a parquet block, and a lifted block is a floor repair rather than a cleaning bill. Ceiling height is the other thing that slows a Chelsea job down, so reach poles come as standard: balancing kit on somebody else’s furniture is how a cornice gets marked and a deposit gets lost twice over.

RBKC sells no visitor vouchers, so we buy the bay by the hour

Almost all of the borough is controlled parking, and Kensington and Chelsea is unusual in how visitors park. On street there are no scratchcards and no visitor vouchers at all. You pay by the hour through PayByPhone during controlled hours, so for most jobs we simply buy the bay nearest the door and top it up as the clean runs. Nothing for you to order in advance, which is a relief next to the boroughs that post cards out.

Estates are the exception worth using. Residents on a council estate get a few free visitor days a month for the marked visitor bays, and one of those covers a full-flat clean comfortably. The whole borough sits inside the ULEZ. Tell us the address and the parking position when you book and we plan arrival around it.

Marsh & Parsons and Carter Jonas check out on a clerk’s list

Lettings here run through agents like Marsh & Parsons on Milner Street in Chelsea and Harrington Road in South Kensington, and Carter Jonas around Knightsbridge. A check-out arrives as an itemised clerk’s report rather than a walk round with the landlord, which is good news if the clean matches it and expensive if it does not.

We work down that list in order: the cornicing and floors in the period flats, the stone bathrooms done safely, the glass in the new-builds. Send the check-in inventory or the check-out report with your booking. On listed and high-spec interiors that briefing matters more than usual, because the line that costs you money is rarely the one you were worrying about.