What’s Included in a Professional Deep House Cleaning? (Room-by-Room Checklist)

Updated October 2026 by Nicole Hubbard, founder of Hubbard’s Maid Service.

The short answer: a professional deep house cleaning covers everything in a regular cleaning, plus the buildup a regular visit never has time for: hand-wiped baseboards, blinds, windowsills, and trim; dusted ceiling fans, light fixtures, and air return vents; scrubbed shower tile and grout; hand-washed cabinet fronts; and cobwebs removed. For most homes it takes 4 to 8 hours, depending on size and condition.

That’s the one-paragraph version. The rest of this guide is the detail we walk people through on the phone almost every day: exactly what’s on our deep-clean checklist room by room, what isn’t on it (that’s where most disappointment comes from, with any company), how long it takes, what drives the price, and how often a Savannah or Lowcountry home really needs one.

Deep Cleaning vs. Regular Cleaning: What’s the Difference?

A deep clean isn’t a regular clean done harder. The difference is scope. A regular maintenance cleaning keeps a home at a standard that’s already been set: kitchen, bathrooms, floors, dusting, and high-touch surfaces, on a schedule. A Top-to-Bottom deep cleaning is a reset. It goes after the dust, grease, and soap scum that build up slowly in places a maintenance visit skips.

Task	Regular cleaning	Deep cleaning
Kitchen counters, sink, and stovetop	Yes	Yes, in more detail
Bathrooms cleaned and sanitized	Yes	Yes, plus tile and grout scrubbing and shower doors
Floors vacuumed and mopped	Yes	Yes, including stairs and rugs
Baseboards, moldings, and trim hand-wiped	No	Yes
Blinds and windowsills hand-wiped	No	Yes
Ceiling fans and light fixtures	No	Yes
Cabinet fronts hand-washed	No	Yes
Inside and outside of the microwave	No	Yes
Lower air return vents	No	Yes
Doors and switch plates spot-cleaned	No	Yes
Typical time on site	A few hours	4 to 8 hours

If you’re trying to decide which one your home needs right now, we wrote a separate guide on exactly that: Deep Clean vs. Recurring Cleaning.

What’s Included in a Deep House Cleaning: Room by Room

This is the checklist our teams work from on a Top-to-Bottom Deluxe Deep Clean. We work from the highest surfaces down to the floors, so dust falls onto areas that haven’t been cleaned yet instead of onto ones that have.

Throughout the Home (Living Areas, Bedrooms, Hallways)

• Ceiling fans hand-wiped (anything we can reach from a step ladder)
• Light fixtures dusted
• Cobwebs removed from corners and ceilings
• Blinds hand-wiped on each side with a microfiber cloth
• Windowsills hand-wiped
• Baseboards, moldings, and trim hand-wiped
• Doors and light switch plates spot-cleaned for fingerprints and dirt
• Wood furniture dusted and polished
• Lower air return vents cleaned
• All floors, carpets, rugs, and stairs vacuumed and mopped

Kitchen

The kitchen usually takes the most time, because grease bonds dust to every surface near the cooktop.

• Stovetop cleaned and degreased, along with the range hood
• Microwave cleaned inside and out
• Fronts of all appliances cleaned
• Cabinet fronts hand-washed
• Countertops and backsplash scrubbed
• Sink cleaned and sanitized
• Floors vacuumed and mopped

Bathrooms

• Showers and bathtubs cleaned and sanitized, including tile and grout scrubbing
• Shower doors cleaned of soap scum and water spots
• Toilets cleaned and sanitized inside and out
• All sinks cleaned and sanitized
• Mirrors cleaned
• Countertops cleaned
• Floors vacuumed and mopped

What a Deep Clean Usually Doesn’t Include

This is the part most companies leave vague, and it’s where expectations go sideways. These items are not on a standard deep-clean checklist, with us or with most maid services. If you need any of them, say so when you book so we can tell you up front what’s possible.

• Inside the oven and refrigerator. We clean the stovetop, appliance fronts, and the microwave inside and out. The interior of the oven and fridge isn’t part of the standard list.
• Window glass and exterior windows. Windowsills and blinds are included. Washing window glass, especially second-story or exterior windows, is a separate job.
• Anything above step-stool height. For safety, our teams reach as high as the second step of a step stool. Very tall ceilings, beams, and high fixtures may be out of reach.
• Fragile collectibles and the inside of display cabinets. We won’t clean in or under valuable knickknacks unless we’ve talked about it first. We’d rather ask than break something you love.
• Carpet shampooing, pressure washing, and wall washing. These are specialty trades, not house cleaning.
• Clutter and dishes. We clean; we don’t sort or organize belongings. We’ll load the dishwasher, but if it’s already full, we’ll neatly stack the rest.
• Mold remediation or re-grouting. A deep clean removes surface mildew from grout. Grout that has been stained for years, or moisture damage behind tile, is a repair job.

Are Windows Included in a Deep Clean?

Partly. Windowsills and blinds are hand-wiped on every Top-to-Bottom deep clean, and in the Lowcountry that matters: sills and tracks are where pollen and moisture collect. Washing the window glass itself, and anything on the outside of the house, isn’t part of a standard deep clean. If clean glass is a priority, mention it when you request your quote.

How Long Does a Deep House Cleaning Take?

A typical deep clean takes 4 to 8 hours on site. The biggest factors are the number of bathrooms, how long it’s been since the last thorough cleaning, pets, and how much is out on counters and floors. We’ll give you a time estimate when you schedule so you can plan your day.

A few things make the visit faster and the result better:

• Pick up first. The tidier the house, the more of our time goes to cleaning instead of working around things.
• Run the dishwasher the night before so the sink and counters can be cleaned properly.
• Tell us your priorities. If you’re home for the first 15 minutes, show the team the shower or the room that bothers you most.
• Put away anything fragile or valuable, or point it out so we can work around it.

How Much Does a Deep Cleaning Cost?

A deep clean costs more than a regular visit because it takes more hours, commonly two to three times the labor of a maintenance cleaning on the same home. For reference, our recurring maintenance cleaning generally runs $150 to $260 per visit for a typical home in our service area. Deep cleans are quoted individually because bathroom count, flooring, pets, and current condition matter much more than square footage.

One thing that surprises people: a deep clean followed by regular service usually costs less over a year than skipping the deep clean and letting recurring visits slowly catch up. For a closer look at pricing, see how much a professional house cleaner costs and our Bluffton house cleaning cost guide.

How Often Should You Deep Clean Your Home?

Most homes do well with a deep clean two to four times a year, with regular maintenance cleaning in between. Homes in Savannah and the Lowcountry tend to land toward the higher end, because our climate works against you:

• Humidity. Long, humid summers mean mildew in shower grout and soap scum that hardens quickly.
• Pollen. From late winter through spring, oak and pine pollen coats sills, blinds, fans, and vents. A deep clean after pollen season removes what keeps recirculating. The EPA lists removing the source of indoor pollutants as the most effective way to improve indoor air quality.
• Sand and salt air. On the islands and near the coast, grit tracks in and salt film builds up on fixtures and glass.

Good times to book one:

• Right before starting recurring service, so every visit after it starts from a clean baseline
• After pollen season or a long, humid summer
• Before the holidays or a house full of guests
• After a renovation, an illness in the house, or a long stretch of travel
• After a hurricane-season power outage, when the house sat warm and damp for days

Deep Cleaning vs. Move-In/Move-Out Cleaning

If the home is empty, you need a different service. A vacant home (move-in/move-out) cleaning is built for an empty house, where we can reach every surface without working around furniture. It’s the right choice for renters trying to recover a security deposit, landlords between tenants, and buyers who want a fresh start before the moving truck arrives.

Is a Professional Deep Clean Worth It?

For most people, the value is the hours. A deep clean is the kind of job that eats an entire weekend for one or two people, and the detail work (grout, blinds, fans, baseboards) is exactly what gets skipped when you’re tired. A trained team with the right products does it in a single visit and leaves you with a baseline that’s much easier to maintain.

When is it not worth it? If someone in your home has kept up with bathrooms and floors consistently and had a thorough cleaning in the last couple of months, you can usually go straight to regular service. We’ll tell you that honestly if it’s true.

Book a Deep Cleaning in Savannah or the Lowcountry

Hubbard’s Maid Service has provided Top-to-Bottom deep cleaning across greater Savannah since 2004, including Pooler, Richmond Hill, Rincon, Statesboro, Hinesville, Tybee Island, and Wilmington Island, as well as Bluffton, Hilton Head, and the South Carolina Lowcountry. We’re licensed, bonded, and insured, our teams bring all the equipment and products, and we’ve earned more than 800 five-star Google reviews. You can read some of them on our reviews page.

Call our Savannah office at (912) 961-9131 or our Hilton Head office at (843) 781-8945, or request a free quote online. Not sure which service you need? Browse all of our cleaning services or just ask. We’ll recommend the smallest service that actually gets your home where you want it.