How to Choose a Cleaner in Brisbane

Cleaning quotes are hard to compare. Everyone lists the same rooms, everyone promises thorough and reliable, and the only figure that differs is the price. What decides whether you are still happy in 6 months is rarely on the quote at all. Here is what to look at instead.

Start with insurance, then move on

Any cleaner running a real business carries public liability insurance and will send you the certificate of currency without hesitating. A pause, a change of subject, or a promise to email it later that never arrives tells you how the rest of the arrangement is likely to run.

Understand what it covers. Insurance exists for the accident: a knocked vase, a scratched benchtop, water where water should not be. Work that was simply done badly is a separate conversation, and plenty of people ask the first question and assume it answered the second.

While you are asking, ask who else holds keys or codes, whether the person doing the work is an employee or a subcontractor, and whether anyone entering your home has been through a police check. Someone will be in your house alone.

What actually separates one cleaner from another

Most cleaning companies send the same person each visit, so that answer on its own tells you little. The real variables are how much time is booked for your home and how much care goes into the result.

Time is the honest measure. A home takes what it takes, and a cleaner given 2 hours for a job that needs 4 has to choose what to skip. Ask how many hours are allocated to your home and what fits inside them.

Pay sits underneath all of it. A cleaner paid properly can afford to take the time the work needs. One squeezed on rate has to make it up somewhere, and the detail work goes first: skirting boards, door frames, the back of the cupboard.

Ask who to contact when something is missed, and who takes responsibility for putting it right. A clear answer there is worth more than a long list of promises.

How they price, and what the pricing model rewards

Cleaners price either by the hour or by the job. Both are legitimate, and each pays for something different, so people behave in line with what they are paid for.

A flat rate rewards finishing fast. If the job pays the same whether it takes 3 hours or 5, every minute saved is money earned. That usually shows up as speed: a spray and wipe across surfaces, a quick pass on the shower, skirting boards and door frames left for another day, the back of the cupboard permanently deferred. It also creates a quiet pull toward harsher chemistry, because strong products are what you reach for when a surface has to look done in half the time.

Hourly pricing costs you more if the work is slow, and the safeguard is simple: agree the hours in advance, agree the list, and judge the result. Hourly keeps the trade-offs visible. If you want the oven done properly this visit, something else moves to next visit, and you can see exactly what that costs.

We charge $85 per hour. A lower price usually means fewer hours in your home, and fewer hours is where harsh chemistry starts filling the gap. We would rather book the time. If you want to see how that plays out against the cheap end of the market, we have written about it at length in what a low quote actually costs you, and there is a plain breakdown of hours and inclusions on the cleaning costs page.

What is included, and what quietly becomes an extra

Get the inclusion list in writing, then read it for what is absent. Everybody lists kitchens and bathrooms. The variation lives in the detail work, and in the spots most cleans miss.

Our standard inclusions are benchtops, tables and general surfaces; kitchens including sinks, splashbacks, stovetops and cupboard fronts; bathrooms including showers, grout, tiles, taps, basins and toilets; skirting boards and windowsills; doors, door frames and high-touch areas; furniture and accessible shelving; floors vacuumed and mopped; and cobweb removal where needed.

Higher detail work belongs in a different category. Ceiling fans, light fittings, cornices, air-conditioning vents and filters, blinds and interior windows do not need doing every visit, and charging fortnightly for work that is not due is a strange way to run a business. We rotate them across visits, so nothing accumulates unseen and you are not paying again for a ceiling fan that was cleaned 3 weeks ago.

Ask what happens when a home is well maintained and the booked hours are not all needed. The remaining time should go somewhere useful: under the kitchen sink, the shelf at the back of the pantry, inside the fridge. You booked the time. The time should be spent.

The first clean is a different job on the same list

A common source of disappointment is the initial clean being quoted as though it were an ordinary visit. Any cleaner who has done this for a while knows how different it is.

A reset deep clean on a 3 bedroom home runs 20 hours, usually 2 cleaners across a couple of days. That might seem like a long time, and it is how long the job takes to do well. It is the same task list on a home where nobody has done it yet, so every item takes 3 times as long: soap scum that has had years to set, mineral build-up on tapware, grout that has never been properly worked, tracks and frames and the tops of things. Once that baseline exists, weekly or fortnightly maintenance holds it, and holding it is fast. The 2 jobs are set out side by side in reset clean versus maintenance clean.

A reset is the ideal starting point and it makes every visit after it easier. Plenty of homes never have one, and regular maintenance cleaning keeps them properly clean on its own. If you would rather start with fortnightly visits and skip the reset, that works, and we will tell you honestly how the first few visits are likely to go.

If a quote treats visit 1 and visit 5 as the same job at the same price, either the first clean will be shallow or the ongoing price is padded to cover it. Neither is fatal. You should know which.

What products come through your door

Most people never ask, and then spend the evening with the windows open. You are entitled to know exactly what is being sprayed in the room your child sleeps in, and to have a say in it.

Marketing language is close to useless as a screening tool. Natural, eco, plant-based, green and non-toxic have no enforced definition here, and a product can carry all of them while containing synthetic fragrance, an antibacterial agent and a dye. If the answer to what do you use is vague, treat the question as unanswered. There is more on decoding this in our guide to reading a cleaning product label.

Our standard is defined by exclusion, which is the only way to make it specific. Every product is fragrance-free. We exclude synthetic fragrance and parfum in every product without exception, hormone-disrupting chemicals, SLS, parabens and phthalates, antibacterial agents including triclosan, bleach, and dyes and added colours. We also avoid essential oils as a rule, which surprises people who assume natural means safe: an essential oil is still a fragrance, and still a common trigger. The reasoning behind each exclusion sits in the cleaning ingredients we avoid and on our natural house cleaning page.

The obvious objection is whether a clean without the strong stuff works. It does, when tools and time replace the chemistry: professional HEPA vacuums, the right product and brush for each surface, a mild acid where there is mineral build-up, and physical effort. Take harsh products away from a cleaner who is being paid to finish in 2 hours and you get a worse clean. Give someone the right equipment and enough hours and you get the same result by a slower route.

The fragrance question, if anyone in the house is sensitive

This is where the gap between cleaners is genuinely large, and where a vague answer costs you most. A cleaner may be entirely willing to use your products and still arrive carrying scent on their uniform, in their cloths, in a laundry product, or in the vacuum from the last house. Scent is stubborn and it travels.

Ask 3 specific things. Are all products fragrance-free, including the ones nobody thinks of as products, such as the detergent used to wash the cloths. Are essential oils used anywhere. And can you see the actual list. A business genuinely built around this answers immediately and in detail, because it is what everything else is organised around. A business that offers to use unscented products on request is making a reasonable offer at a completely different standard.

For households where this is the main reason you are hiring anybody at all, our allergy-friendly cleaning approach sets out how the method changes: HEPA filtration, dust removed and captured, and no fragrance introduced at any stage.

What happens when something is not right

Every cleaner misses something eventually. The difference is what the business does next, and you can usually predict it from how the question is answered before you book.

Look for a specific commitment with a time frame attached. Ours is that if something agreed has been missed or not done properly, tell us within 7 days and we come back and put it right at no charge. Vague reassurance leaves both the definition and the deadline open.

There is a fairness point on the other side. The clean is booked for a set amount of time and we work through the agreed list thoroughly. If particular areas matter most to you, say so before we start. Nobody can prioritise everything at once. Tell us what comes first.

Questions worth asking before you commit

• Can you send me your certificate of currency for public liability insurance
• How many hours are booked for my home, and what fits inside them
• Is the price hourly or fixed, and what happens if the job runs over or finishes early
• What exactly is on the standard list, and which items rotate across visits
• Can I see the products you use, in full, including the laundry product used on your cloths
• How is the first clean priced compared with ongoing visits, and how many hours do you expect it to take
• If I am not happy with something, what is the process and how long do I have to raise it

None of these are aggressive. All of them are answerable in a sentence by someone who has thought about their own business. We have expanded on each one in the questions to ask before booking a cleaner, including how to read the answers you get back.

A quote tells you what a clean costs. How the quote is structured tells you what the cleaner is being paid to do, which is the part you actually live with.

The honest version of who this suits

Plenty of homes do not need what we do. If nobody in your household reacts to fragrance, if you are comfortable with conventional products, and what you want is a competent clean at the lowest sensible price, there are good cleaners across Brisbane's north who will do that well and charge less than we do. That is a real answer.

Where the difference earns its price is narrower. Households where somebody is sensitive to scent. Homes where a baby or a young child spends most of the day on the floor. People who have already stripped fragrance out of their own cupboard and would like it kept out. Older Queenslanders around Gaythorne, Ashgrove and The Gap, where humidity and airflow make dust and damp a permanent management job.

If that sounds like your house, the practical next step is a conversation about hours rather than a quote off a room count. Have a look at how we work and what we refuse to use, or get in touch and tell us what your home is actually like.