What Does a Deep Clean Include? A Room by Room Breakdown

Short answer: a deep clean is everything in a standard clean, plus the surfaces a standard clean never touches. Baseboards, door frames, window sills, light fixtures, vents, behind and under whatever can be moved, and the buildup spots in kitchens and bathrooms that need scrubbing rather than wiping. It takes roughly twice as long as a standard clean of the same home, and that time is the whole difference.

The baseline: what a standard clean covers

To understand a deep clean you need the baseline. A standard (or maintenance) clean covers the visible, frequently used surfaces of a lived-in home: floors swept, mopped, and vacuumed; surfaces and furniture dusted; kitchen counters, stovetop, sink, and appliance exteriors cleaned; bathrooms scrubbed (toilet, sink, tub or shower, mirrors); beds made; trash out. Done regularly, it keeps a clean home clean.

What it does not do is reverse accumulation. Dust on the top of a door frame, film on window sills, soap scum that has had months to mineralize, grease that has migrated to cabinet fronts: none of that yields to a maintenance pass. That is deep clean territory.

Deep clean, room by room

Kitchen

Everything in the standard clean, plus: degreasing the stovetop, hood, and backsplash; wiping cabinet fronts and handles; cleaning the exterior of every appliance including the toaster-and-kettle zone; scrubbing the sink and polishing the faucet; wiping down small-appliance surfaces; and detail work on the counter edges and seams where crumbs collect. Inside the oven and inside the fridge are typically add-ons at most companies, ours included, because they add real time. If you want them, say so at booking.

Bathrooms

This is where a deep clean earns its keep. Descaling showerheads and faucets, scrubbing grout lines, removing soap scum from glass and tile rather than smearing it, cleaning the exhaust fan cover, wiping down the vanity inside edges, and getting the floor corners and behind-the-toilet zone that a quick pass skips. In NYC bathrooms with decades-old tile, this is slow, physical work, and it is the single most requested part of the service.

Bedrooms and living areas

On top of standard dusting and floors: baseboards wiped along every wall, door frames and doors (tops included), window sills and reachable window interiors, light fixtures and ceiling fan blades, switch plates and outlet covers, and dusting of shelving with items lifted rather than dusted around. We move light furniture to clean beneath it; heavy or fragile pieces stay put unless arranged in advance.

Everywhere

Radiators (a big deal in prewar Brooklyn buildings), vents within reach, hallway trim, stair banisters and spindles, and entryway detail. In brownstones and walk-ups these surfaces carry most of the visible age in an apartment, and cleaning them changes how the whole place reads.

When a deep clean is the right call

First visit from a cleaning service: almost always. Starting recurring service on a deep-cleaned base means every later visit maintains rather than catches up, and most services (ours included) will tell you this directly. Other classic triggers: before hosting holidays or a party, after a renovation (construction dust gets everywhere and needs its own approach), spring reset after a closed-window winter, moving into a home the previous occupant left "broom clean", and any time the apartment has gone more than a few months without professional cleaning.

If your home is professionally cleaned every week or two, you rarely need a deep clean more than once or twice a year. If cleaning happens only when company is coming, assume the first professional visit should be a deep clean.

Deep clean vs move out clean

One step further up the ladder is the move out clean: everything in a deep clean, plus the insides. Inside cabinets, inside closets, inside the oven and fridge as standard rather than add-ons, because the home has to hand over empty and inspection-ready. If you are leaving a rental, that is the service you want; we cover exactly what landlords check in our move out cleaning checklist for NYC renters.

How long does it take, and what does it cost?

Time scales with size and condition. A one-bedroom apartment in reasonable shape usually takes a two-person team a few hours; a four-story brownstone that has not seen a deep clean in years is most of a day for a larger crew. Cost follows the same inputs. Rather than quote a fake average here, we wrote a separate guide on what house cleaning costs in Brooklyn that explains what actually drives the number, and our quote form gives you a real price for your specific home in about a minute.

Full service details, including what is standard and what is an add-on, are on our deep cleaning service page. For regular upkeep after the deep clean, see apartment cleaning.