It depends on your house, and we will give you the honest version of the answer. If you have a handful of ground-floor windows you can reach comfortably, and you do not mind spending 1 Saturday hour on them, you do not need us. Buy a decent squeegee kit, which runs $30–$50 at any hardware store, skip the paper towels, and you will get a result you are happy with.
When does DIY stop making sense?
The math changes as the house grows. Second-story glass means ladder work, and ladders on soft grass, pavers, or pool decks are where homeowner injuries actually happen. Glass over a pool cage, above a stairwell, or behind dense landscaping is genuinely awkward without the right equipment, and the water-fed pole rigs that make it easy run $500 or more, which no one buys for 2 cleanings a year. A 2-story home that a crew handles in 2–3 hours can eat 6–8 hours of a homeowner’s weekend, ladder moves included, and rushed technique tells on itself: film that gets spread around instead of removed hazes back over within 1–2 weeks. At some point the question stops being about money and becomes whether it is worth your time and your ankles. For a lot of 2-story South Florida homes, it is not.
Coastal homes tip the scale further. Salt film returns on a schedule no homeowner enjoys keeping, often every 4–8 weeks on oceanfront glass, and recurring visits keep that glass clear without anyone hauling a ladder around every month. The same goes for homes where sprinklers keep re-spotting the same elevation; the fix involves treatment and prevention, not more Saturday scrubbing.
What does a professional visit include that DIY misses?
There is a real difference in what gets done, not just how fast. A professional visit is not just the panes. Frames and sills come with every window we touch, screens come off and get washed, tracks get detailed when they are in scope, and problems get spotted early: a failed double-pane seal fogging from the inside, sprinkler mineral spots starting to bond within their first 2–3 months, a screen quietly tearing at the corner. Catching the sprinkler problem alone can save a glass restoration bill later, because deposits left 1–2 years in the sun can etch glass permanently. What a full scope covers is described in do you clean interior and exterior windows.
How should you compare quotes?
Compare scopes rather than pane counts. Exterior only or both sides, screens and tracks or glass alone, 1 story or 2, routine film or bonded deposits. Two quotes with the same number of windows can describe very different jobs, and the cheaper one is sometimes cheaper because it quietly includes less.
A fair comparison asks each company the same 4 questions: which sides of the glass, whether screens and tracks are in, how access issues like pool cages are handled, and what happens if the glass has mineral staining that routine cleaning cannot touch. The answers reveal the actual job behind the number, and how long does window cleaning take explains why the same house can honestly quote at very different visit lengths.
Related questions
- How long does window cleaning take? ; Pane count, access, interior work, screens, tracks, and glass condition all affect the visit length.
- Do you clean interior and exterior windows? ; Yes. Exterior, interior, or both, with frames and sills included and screen cleaning available.
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