Residential Window Cleaning Melbourne
Inside and outside are two different jobs on the same glass. Frames, sills and tracks go with it, in one visit rather than two bookings.
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Most people put off window cleaning because the outside looks manageable and the inside looks like a Saturday. Both hold up until you do it once. Then the ladder, the streaks that appear as the glass dries and the tracks packed with grit make the argument on their own.
Residential window cleaning covers the glass on both faces, the frames, the sills and the tracks, on houses and apartments across Melbourne. One visit, an insured crew, and nothing left running down the wall inside.
Home window cleaning is priced by how many panes there are and how high they sit, not by what the listing says about bedrooms. From $165 for an apartment, $198 for a single-storey house and $275 for a double-storey, including GST.
Why residential window cleaning gets cheaper twice a year
Most people book residential window cleaning one of two ways, and the difference is money rather than method.
- The first is an occasion. The house is going on the market, the builders have gone, the family is arriving on Friday. It is one visit, everything at once, and nobody is thinking about the next one.
- The second is an interval, usually twice a year. It works out cheaper per visit for a reason that has nothing to do with loyalty discounts: film six months old comes off with water, and film three years old has to be worked off pane by pane.
- Which one suits you is decided by what is around the house rather than by the house. Glass under a gum, glass on a main road and glass facing the bay all load at different speeds, and two of those three do not wait for you to notice.
- We will say when a place does not need doing yet. A house cleaned four months ago and standing away from the road is usually still fine, and telling you so is cheaper than losing you afterwards.
Four things land on a window, and only one rinses
Glass does not get dirty the way a floor does. Four things land on it, and they do not come off the same way.
- Dust and road film. The grey that arrives evenly and slowly. Nobody sees it happen, which is why the difference after a clean surprises people who thought their windows were fine.
- Salt. Closer to the bay it settles on the glass and on the frames, and it does not rinse away with rain. It is an electrolyte rather than a dust, and it goes to work on the fittings while it sits on the pane.
- Cobwebs and what builds them. Corners, frames and the underside of sills. It is the one thing on this list that comes back within weeks rather than months, and the one people are most embarrassed to leave.
- Hard water spotting. Sprinklers, a downpipe that splashes, a tap left running down a wall. The water dries and the minerals stay, and past a certain point those marks are in the glass rather than on it.
| What goes wrong | What causes it | What it costs | How to prevent it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marks that no longer wash off | Sprinkler or downpipe water drying on the pane, season after season | Permanent. Etched glass is replaced, not cleanedNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Rinse the affected panes on a schedule and aim the sprinkler away |
| A sliding door that stops running | Grit packed into the track wearing the rollers | Replacing rollers, or the door, for want of a clean trackNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Clear and flush the tracks whenever the glass is done |
| Seals perishing early | Grit and salt left sitting against the rubber | Reglazing a unit that had years left in itNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Wash the frames and the rebate, not only the pane |
| Timber sills going soft | Water held under paint by dirt that was never wiped | Carpentry, then painting, on a frame that only needed wipingNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Wipe sills dry as part of every clean |
| Flyscreens torn or thrown out | Screens sprayed in place until the mesh clogs and sags | Replacing screens that would have washed cleanNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Take screens out and wash them flat |
| A scratch across a new pane | Something sharp dragged over dry, coated glass | Permanent. The pane is replacedNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Never work dry glass, and never scrape a coated pane |
Sources
No published dollar figure exists for any of these on a Melbourne house, so none is quoted. Every row is trade experience and says so in the row.
Glass is the quick part of the job
The glass is the part everyone pictures and the smallest part of the time. Both faces of every pane, then the frames, the sills and the tracks, because that is where the dirt comes back from the moment a window is opened.
- Flyscreens come out and get washed rather than being sprayed where they hang. A screen washed in place pushes its own dirt back onto the glass behind it, which is how a job looks finished on the day and looks average by the weekend.
- Skylight cleaning is a separate conversation and worth having. A skylight is the dirtiest glass in most houses because nothing ever touches it, and it is the one pane where the difference is visible from inside the moment it is done.
What is not included. Three things sit outside the job:
- Repairs to sashes, seals, hinges or hardware
- Anything that needs a licence we do not hold
- Removing paint, render or builders' silicone, unless it was quoted as post-build work
If a pane is already chipped, a seal has failed or a frame is rotten, you get a photograph and a plain description before we go any further. We clean; we do not repair.
Window cleaning prices in Melbourne, by storey
Windows are priced by pane count and by height. The three starting points below are for a house with the outsides done; adding the insides is a separate line, because it is a separate pass.
from — glass reachable without rope access
from — outsides, frames, sills and tracks
from — reached from the ground where the access allows
All prices include GST. Insides are quoted with the job, since they roughly double the time on site.
4 things that affect the cost of window cleaning.
Four things move the number:
- How many panes there are, counted as panes rather than as windows
- How high the highest one sits, and what stands under it
- Whether the insides are in the job
- What is on the glass already — six-month film rinses, three-year film is worked off
People search for a window cleaning cost 3 bedroom house and it is a fair question with an unfair answer: two three-bedroom houses can differ by half again on pane count alone. A single-fronted cottage and a project home have the same bedrooms and nothing else in common.
So send a photo of the front and one of the back, and say whether you want the insides. That is enough for a figure rather than a range, and it takes about a minute.
One thing worth knowing before you book: if the whole outside of the house is being done anyway, the outside glass is already inside a house wash package. Bundled it costs less than the two booked separately, and it is one visit instead of two.
Do I need to be home while the windows are being washed?
For an outside-only clean you do not need to be there. The water comes from your tap, the work happens outside, and you come home to it done.
Inside changes that, and it changes the timing more than people expect. Blinds get moved, furniture gets shifted away from the glass and put back, and every surface below a window has to stay dry. Our longest single window job this year ran five and a quarter hours for one technician, and the inside pass was most of it.
The order is fixed: outside first, then inside, then the frames and tracks. Glass done before the frames gets marked again as soon as the frames are wiped, so the sequence is not a preference.
Every pane gets a final look in daylight from the angle you actually stand at. Glass that reads clean straight on will show a film from three steps to the side, and that is where a job is either finished or not.
Nothing sharp goes across dry glass. Scraping a dry pane is how a permanent scratch happens, and it happens fastest on new glass with a coating on it.
Recent jobs, with the glass in daylight
Windows and skylights on St Helen's Road, Hawthorn East, done in July. The third job at this property inside a year, after the paving and then the gutters.
Read case study
Gutters and windows on Blenheim Street, Balaclava, in one visit in mid-May. Four and a quarter hours on site for one technician.
Read case study
Window cleaningAn apartment window clean on Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park, directly opposite the beach. The glass sits beyond the balcony line, so the outer faces had to be reached with specialist equipment rather than washed from the balcony.
Read case study
Window cleaningA window clean on Seymour Road, Elsternwick, where the glass sits directly above a swimming pool. There was no dry ground to work from, so the job was done from inside the water.
Read case study
Window cleaningSkylights cleaned on Canterbury Road, St Kilda West, in October 2024. They had gone a long time without attention, and moss and mould had taken hold around the glass.
Read case study
Window cleaningThree kinds of glass on one property in Bentleigh, cleaned at the end of summer: windows inside and out, the frameless pool fencing, and skylights on the terrace nobody had been able to reach.
Read case study
Google reviews
Clients on the glass, from Google
Recent verified feedback from local clients who booked exterior cleaning with WaterCrew.
★★★★★ GoogleJuly 2026"Very happy with the service. They were clean, professional and left everything tidy Plus the job was done beautifully Many thanks!"
MelbourneView on Google ↗
★★★★★ GoogleJune 2026"Highly recommend Eren and his WaterCrew. Have used for gutter cleaning and will in future use for terracotta roof tile cleaning & window cleaning. They do a very thorough and professional job at competitive rates. Also, they are polite, friendly and well spoken."
CanterburyView on Google ↗
★★★★★ GoogleJune 2026"WaterCrew Cleaning recently cleaned the windows at my home in Chadstone and did an excellent job. The team was professional, friendly, and easy to deal with. The windows look crystal clear, and the service was completed on time and to a very high standard. I would highly recommend WaterCrew Cleaning to anyone looking for reliable window cleaning services in Chadstone."
MelbourneView on Google ↗
★★★★★ GoogleJune 2026"New age equipment, timely with very satisfactory results. Highly recommend crew for exterior/interior and flyscreen cleaning. Gutters cleaning available as well Best crew I came across for sometime and reasonably priced. Collin"
HamptonView on Google ↗
Four reasons the call gets made
A house being lived in
Twice a year, usually autumn and spring, and the trigger is light rather than dirt. Rooms that felt dim in July turn out to have been looking through six months of road film.
An apartment or a unit
Apartment window cleaning is decided by what can be reached: some glass opens inwards and some sits outside the balcony line entirely. We work out which before quoting, not on the day.
A house going to market
Photographs are taken once and every inspection happens in daylight. Glass is the cheapest thing on the list that changes how a room reads in a photo.
A rental changeover
A short window between tenants, a condition report to satisfy, and an invoice that has to be clean. Frames and tracks matter here as much as the glass does.
The six questions that come up first
Will you leave streaks?+
Not once it dries, which is the only test that counts. Every pane gets a last look in daylight from an angle, because glass that reads clean straight on will show a film from three steps to the side.
Do you clean the frames and tracks too?+
Yes, and they take longer than the glass. Tracks hold grit that wears rollers, and sills hold water that rots timber. A quote that skips them is quoting a different job.
What about flyscreens?+
They come out and get washed flat. A screen sprayed while it hangs pushes its own dirt back onto the glass behind it, which is why that version looks fine on the day and average by the weekend.
Can you reach upstairs windows?+
Usually from the ground with a pole and purified water. Where a pergola, a deep eave or a balcony blocks the reach we use a ladder, and that needs level ground under it. Above two storeys it becomes a rope access job.
Do you clean skylights?+
Yes, and they are worth asking for. Nothing ever touches a skylight, so it is generally the dirtiest glass in the house and the one where the difference is obvious from inside straight away.
What if a window is already damaged?+
You get a photograph before anything else happens. A chipped pane or a failed seal is a glazier's job, and cleaning around known damage is not something to improvise on.
Why the second storey changes the job
A second storey is not twice the work, it is a different job with a different set of decisions before anyone touches the glass.
High window cleaning from the ground is done with a pole and purified water, which is the safest way to reach a first-floor pane and the only sensible way to do a row of them. The water carries nothing, so the glass dries without spotting and nobody is standing on a ladder in a garden bed.
What a pole cannot do is get behind an obstruction. A pergola, a deep eave, a balcony above the window: those need the ladder, and the ladder needs level ground under it. That is the question a second story window cleaner is really answering when they look at your house, and it is why a price over the phone for an upstairs job is a guess.
Above two storeys it stops being this service. Anything needing rope access or a lift belongs on the high-rise page, and quoting it here would be quoting work with different equipment and different tickets.
Frames, tracks and the parts nobody asks for
Ask any house window cleaner what separates a two-hour job from a four-hour one and the answer is never the glass. It is everything around it.
Tracks fill with grit, and grit is what wears a roller and what stops a sliding door running. Clearing a track takes minutes on the day and saves a door that otherwise gets replaced because nobody could work out why it stuck.
Sills hold water. On timber that is how rot starts, and it starts under the paint where it is invisible until the frame is soft. Wiping a sill is not cosmetic on an older house.
So when a window washer residential quote comes in well under the others, the fair question is not whether they will clean the glass. They will. The question is what they are not doing, and it is usually the frames, the tracks and the screens.
Reading a window cleaning quote in 2026
Residential window cleaning is priced by pane count, height and whether the insides are in it. A quote given without any of those three is a number chosen rather than worked out.
Be careful with a figure well under the others. The fast version of this job is the outsides only, glass only, no frames, no tracks, no screens, and it looks identical on the day. The difference shows up in a fortnight when the frames put their dirt back on the glass.
Be equally careful with a flat rate for an upstairs house quoted sight unseen. Access decides that job, and access is the one thing that cannot be assessed down the phone.
Ours are on this page and in that order: from one hundred and sixty-five dollars for an apartment, one hundred and ninety-eight for a single-storey house, two hundred and seventy-five for a double-storey. All including GST, all for the outsides with the frames, sills and tracks in them.
The numbers are published for the same reason the method is. Two quotes cannot be compared when only one of them says what it covers.
About the expert
Ihor Sydorenko
Founder & Lead Rope Access Technician (IRATA Level 3) — WaterCrew Cleaning
Ihor has worked on ropes since 2013, starting on high-rise facades in Kyiv, where he founded and still runs the rope-access company Альпіністи Київ. He holds IRATA Level 3 — the highest grade in the international rope-access system, covering work supervision, safety planning and rescue.
- ✓ IRATA Level 3 rope access technician
- ✓ Working safely at heights
- ✓ Construction induction
- ✓ First aid