How Much Does After-Renovation Cleaning Cost in Melbourne in 2026?

Post-renovation cleaning surprises people on price more than any other job, and it's worth explaining why before the numbers. It isn't a big regular clean. Construction dust behaves completely differently to household dust, and that difference is the entire cost story.

Why renovation dust costs more to remove

Plaster, render, concrete, timber and tile-cutting dust is extremely fine - a large share of it well under 10 microns. Particles that small stay airborne for hours after the trades leave, then settle everywhere, including inside cupboards, on the top of door frames, in window tracks, on curtain rails, inside light fittings and through the air conditioning. It's also mildly abrasive and slightly alkaline, so it smears rather than wipes if you attack it wet too early.

The practical consequence is that a post-renovation clean is never one pass. Dust that was airborne during the first clean settles onto the surfaces you just did. Two full passes is the minimum, three is common, and there's usually a return visit a day or two later on bigger jobs.

There's a safety layer too. Cutting concrete, tile and engineered stone generates respirable crystalline silica - the hazard serious enough that Australia banned the manufacture and installation of engineered stone benchtops from July 2024. Any cleaner handling that dust should be using sealed HEPA extraction rather than a domestic vacuum that blows the fines straight back out. Filters get consumed fast on these jobs, and that's a real input cost.

Typical Melbourne prices in 2026

Market ranges across Melbourne, for a proper detail clean after trades have finished:

• Single room refresh (bedroom, small living space): $250 - $450
• Kitchen or bathroom renovation, cleaned to move-in standard: $350 - $700
• Two-bedroom apartment after a full internal renovation: $600 - $1,100
• Three-bedroom house, full renovation: $900 - $1,800
• Four-bedroom or larger / new build handover: $1,500 - $3,000+

Hourly, most Melbourne operators sit between $55 and $85 per hour for this work. We quote after-renovation cleaning from our deep cleaning rate of $60/hour, which for most bayside jobs lands at the lower end of those ranges - you pay for the hours the job genuinely takes rather than a padded fixed price.

What moves the number

• How much protection the builder used. A site that was properly sheeted and taped is dramatically cheaper to clean than one where dust travelled through the whole house. This is the single biggest variable.
• Whether it's a rough clean or a final detail clean. A rough clean between trades is quick. The final handover clean - where every surface must be presentation-ready - is where the hours go.
• Paint, silicone, adhesive and sticker residue. Scraping paint spots off windows and removing protective film from appliances and glass is slow, careful, per-item work.
• Windows. Renovation glass usually needs both sides plus tracks and frames, often with scraping. Frequently quoted separately.
• Floor type. New timber and stone need specific pH-neutral treatment; grout haze on new tiling is its own job.
• Rubbish left behind. Offcuts, packaging and paint tins aren't cleaning, and removal is usually a separate line.
• Access. Second-floor apartments without lift access, or tight parking around Mentone and Mordialloc side streets, adds time.

How to keep the cost down

1. Book it after the last trade, not between them. Cleaning a site that a painter is coming back to means paying twice.
2. Get rubbish and offcuts removed first. Cleaners charge cleaning rates for waste removal.
3. Ask the builder about dust protection up front. Sheeting doorways costs them almost nothing and saves you hundreds.
4. Change your air conditioning and heating filters after the work - and don't run the system during the renovation if you can avoid it, or you'll be redistributing dust for months.
5. Be specific about the standard you want. "Ready to move in" and "ready to photograph for sale" are different jobs at different prices.

What a good quote looks like

It should state how many passes are included, whether windows and window tracks are in or out, whether paint and adhesive removal is included, whether rubbish removal is separate, and what happens if dust resettles. Anything vaguer than that usually turns into a variation later - which is the actual source of most bad experiences with this job, rather than the headline price.