The two sides of a window are two different jobs, so they are priced differently, and which one costs more depends on your house. Here is what drives each side's price, where paying a professional makes sense, and how to ask for a quote that separates them.
In This Article
Why the two sides are priced as different jobs
| Side | What takes the time | What raises or lowers the price |
|---|---|---|
| Exterior | Reaching the glass with poles or ladders, protecting gardens, working in weather, and dealing with screens, frames and sills. | Height, roofs and decks below windows, steep grades, dense shrubs, and heavy dirt or mineral spotting. |
| Interior | Moving furniture, protecting floors, working around blinds and curtains, and going room to room. | Cluttered rooms, pets, high windows over stairs or tubs, and how many rooms have glass. |
The exterior depends on the outside of your house, and the interior depends on the inside. A tidy home with a difficult exterior and a cluttered home with an easy exterior can flip which side costs more. That is why no honest rule says the outside always costs more, or less. Ask for both numbers.
Screens, tracks and sills sit between the two sides. Screens live in the frame, tracks collect dirt on both faces, and sills are inside and out, so quotes differ on where they are counted. Ask which side of the quote carries them.
What each side actually involves
Exterior. A crew rinses off loose grit, scrubs the glass and frames, then rinses or squeegees, and checks the result at an angle. Screens are taken off, cleaned and refitted if they are part of the job. Sills and tracks get a wipe or a wash.
Interior. A crew protects floors, dusts sills, cleans the glass, wipes frames and puts screens back. If a window tilts in, the outside face can sometimes be reached from indoors, which is handy upstairs.
Each side alone leaves a job half finished: glass looks dull if one face is dirty. Together, they take longer, but crews work faster when they can move straight between them.
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What slows interior work down
Homeowners often expect interior cleaning to be the quick half. It slows down in predictable ways.
- Blinds, shutters and heavy drapes that have to be moved or worked around.
- Sills packed with plants, ornaments or electronics.
- Large furniture pushed against the wall below windows.
- Glass walls and sliding doors with many large panes.
- Pets and children underfoot, or someone working from home in the next room.
Twenty minutes of tidying before a crew arrives is the cheapest way to keep this side of the job short.
Where paying for it is worth it
- Exterior glass, almost always. It is where height, weather and hard-water spotting make hand cleaning slow and risky.
- Interior windows that are hard to reach. Stairwells, cathedral ceilings and glass over a bathtub call for reach and steady footing.
- After renovations. Dust, paint and sticker residue take hands-on work.
- Before listing photos or hosting. Clean glass changes how a room photographs and feels.
- For allergies or limited mobility. Someone else doing the reaching and wiping is a real benefit.
Where you can save without losing quality
- Do ground-floor interior glass yourself. It needs only microfibre, a little soap and a squeegee.
- Keep interior cleaning as a routine, and hire professionals for the exterior visits, so the outside gets the hardest work.
- Alternate: book both sides one visit, exterior only the next, and clean the interior between.
- Tidy the windows before the crew arrives. Clear sills and move small furniture, and you cut the time.
Ask whether doing both sides in one visit changes the price, since one set of travel and setup is shared.
How to ask for a split quote
- Give the count of windows and glass doors by floor.
- Ask for three prices: exterior only, interior only, and both together.
- Ask what is included on each side: screens, tracks, sills, frames and blinds.
- Ask about extras, such as skylights, basement windows and glass railings, and how they are priced.
- Get the total in writing, showing the sides and what is included.
D&D Home Services publishes window cleaning from $125 for typical Kitchener-Waterloo homes, with free quotes confirmed in writing before work begins. See the published starting prices and the window cleaning page, and read which add-ons are worth paying for when you compare.
Key Takeaways
- Exterior and interior cleaning are priced as different jobs, and either can cost more depending on access, height and clutter.
- Paying a professional makes most sense for exterior glass, hard-to-reach interior windows and post-renovation cleanup.
- Cleaning ground-floor interior glass yourself is a sensible way to save.
- Ask for exterior only, interior only and combined prices, with what is included on each side written down.
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