Tile & Grout Cleaning Cost NSW 2026 - Get Free Quotes

Tile and Grout Cleaning Costs in NSW

A machine clean runs $8 to $18 a square metre and forms the baseline service that everything else builds on top of. Adding a penetrating sealer takes it to $15 to $30, colour sealing sits at $18 to $35, and regrouting is a different trade at $35 to $65. General cleaning is quoted at cleaning services costs. Most operators apply a minimum of $200 to $350 regardless of area. Cleaning and sealing are almost always quoted together as a single package.

That minimum is why a single bathroom costs more per square metre than a whole house. Setting up a truck mounted or portable machine, running the hoses, masking off and packing down again takes the same time whether the job covers six square metres or sixty, so small areas carry that overhead disproportionately. Combine several rooms into a single visit wherever you can. The rate drops noticeably above about thirty square metres. A bathroom and a laundry booked together cost far less than the same two rooms on separate visits. Professional machines run around a thousand PSI with water near eighty degrees.

This is a specialist trade rather than something a general cleaner does well. The equipment is a high pressure hot water extraction unit fitted with a sealed spinner head, which is expensive, heavy and specific to hard surfaces, and the operator has to know which chemicals suit which tile and which will ruin it. A domestic scrubbing brush is a completely different activity. The two results are not remotely comparable. Machines cost between eight and twenty five thousand dollars, which is why general cleaners do not carry them. Hiring a domestic unit from a hardware store produces a fraction of the result.

Machine Cleaning and Methods

Hot water extraction under pressure is the standard professional method. Water at high temperature and high pressure is driven into the grout while a sealed head simultaneously vacuums it straight back out, so the soiling lifts and leaves with the water rather than being pushed further into the joint. Nothing at all is left behind on the floor afterwards. Recovering the water is the step that mopping simply does not have. Alkaline pre treatment needs a good ten to fifteen minutes before the machine touches anything. Truck mounted machines cost between eight and twenty five thousand dollars.

Pre treatment does more of the work than the machine does. An alkaline product applied and left to dwell breaks down the oils and organic soiling held inside the grout, so the machine then lifts something already loosened rather than trying to blast it free. Dwell time matters considerably more than raw pressure does. Skipping the dwell stage produces a mediocre result at full price. Alkaline products saponify oils and lift organic soiling, which is a chemical process with a timeframe. Cement haze and hard water scale respond to acid and to almost nothing else.

Acidic products have a place and a real risk attached. Acids dissolve mineral deposits, efflorescence and cement haze very effectively, but they also attack the cement based grout itself and etch natural stone permanently, which is why an experienced operator reaches for them selectively instead of routinely. Never let an acidic product near stone without testing first. Acid on marble etches instantly and cannot be reversed. Neutralising afterwards matters as much as the application.

Steam cleaning suits some situations and struggles with others. Steam sanitises and lifts light soiling without leaving any chemical residue, which appeals in kitchens and anywhere children or pets are a consideration, though it lacks the extraction step that removes heavy build up from porous grout. Steam works well as a maintenance method between proper deep cleans. Steam rarely rescues grout that has been neglected for years. Steam vapour kills mould spores on contact without leaving any chemical residue.

Hand scrubbing still has a role in tight areas. A shower recess, a stair nosing or a small splashback often cannot take a machine head at all, so the operator works with a hand brush and a chemical instead, which is slower and gets priced accordingly. Bathroom detail work is quoted at bathroom deep cleaning costs. Small areas are priced on labour rather than equipment time. A shower recess takes forty five minutes to an hour by hand, which is why it prices as a unit. A single shower recess takes close to an hour of careful hand work.

Wastewater has to go somewhere and the answer matters. A professional unit captures the recovered water in a tank for proper disposal rather than letting it run into a garden bed or a stormwater drain, and cleaning chemicals in stormwater are a genuine problem. Environmental obligations are administered by the NSW EPA. Ask where the recovered water goes. Consumer guarantees on services are administered by the ACCC, and a job that fails to meet a reasonable standard is covered by them. Photograph the finished result before the operator packs up and leaves.

What a Clean Can Recover

Grout is porous, and that single fact governs everything else about the job. Cement based grout has an open structure that absorbs liquid, oil and pigment steadily over years, and staining held within the material behaves quite differently from soiling sitting on top of it. Soiling sitting on the surface always comes away. Pigment absorbed into the material sometimes does not. Absorbed staining sits well below the surface where a brush can never reach.

The realistic outcome is a return to the grout's underlying colour and not to white. Many floors people describe as having white grout never actually had white grout, since builders commonly specify grey or beige through wet areas, and a clean reveals the original colour instead of producing a new one. Find an offcut or a hidden corner behind a vanity. That is the honest reference point. Grey and beige grout hides construction soiling far better during a build, which is exactly why it gets specified. Builders specify grey and beige grout precisely because it hides construction soiling.

A test patch is the only reliable way of knowing the outcome in advance. An operator who cleans one square metre in the worst area at no charge and then shows you the result is telling you exactly what you are buying, and the whole exercise takes fifteen minutes. Do not agree to any figure until you have seen that one square metre. A refusal to test is an answer in itself. A test also reveals whether the tile itself will be affected by the chemical being used. Fifteen minutes at the start prevents a very expensive discovery later on.

Some staining is permanent regardless of the method used on it. Rust from a metal object left standing on a wet floor, dye from a spill, cement haze never removed at installation and grout that has taken up pigment across decades all resist cleaning entirely. Colour sealing covers all of those permanently. Cleaning on its own will not touch them. Iron staining bonds chemically with the cement instead of simply sitting in it.

Mould in grout is a different problem altogether from ordinary soiling. Black growth in a shower recess indicates persistent moisture, and while a clean kills and removes the visible growth, it comes back unless the underlying moisture problem is addressed. Full remediation is covered at mould remediation costs. Improving the ventilation is the only actual fix. Growth returning within weeks of a clean is a ventilation diagnosis and not a cleaning failure. Sydney specialists commonly book a week or two out in a normal market.

Damaged grout cannot be cleaned back into a sound condition. Cracked, crumbling, hollow sounding or missing grout has failed structurally, and running a high pressure machine over it simply removes more of whatever remains. Individual repairs are quoted at tile repair costs. A good operator identifies that before starting anything. Pressure applied to failed grout drives water into the substrate behind the tiles. That is precisely how a cleaning job turns into a waterproofing job.

Penetrating and Colour Sealing

A penetrating sealer soaks into the grout and repels liquid from within. It does not change the appearance, does not sit on the surface and cannot peel, which makes it the sensible default after any clean, and it holds the result for two to five years depending on traffic. A penetrating sealer buys you time rather than colour. Reapplying a penetrating sealer later is straightforward. Silane and siloxane based sealers cure within the pore structure itself.

Colour sealing is a different product doing a different job. It is a pigmented coating worked into the grout lines that both seals and recolours, producing a completely uniform line in whatever colour you choose, and it covers over staining that cleaning could never lift. Colour sealing amounts to a genuine cosmetic transformation. It is also the most common upsell in the trade. A colour sealed line is a single uniform colour with no variation along its length. A sealed head is what keeps high pressure water from spraying up the walls.

The trade off with colour sealing is that it sits on the surface. A coating can wear at high traffic points, chip at an edge, and eventually needs stripping and reapplying rather than simply topping up, which is a bigger job than resealing a penetrating sealer. Expect five to ten years from a good application. Preparation determines whether the coating lasts. Traffic lanes wear first, which means a hallway shows before a bedroom does. Touching up a worn section of coating rarely matches the surrounding area.

Application quality is the difference between a good colour seal and an obvious one. The product has to be worked into the grout line and cleaned precisely off the tile face before it cures, and a rushed job leaves a haze on the tiles that is really difficult to remove afterwards. Inspect the tile faces under a strong light afterwards. Product overrun onto the tile face is the giveaway. Traffic lanes wear well before bedrooms do on any coated grout.

Timing matters because everything has to be dry. Sealing damp grout traps the moisture underneath and the sealer fails, so a floor cleaned on Monday is sealed on Tuesday or later depending on conditions. Two separate visits is correct and not inconvenient. Anybody sealing within the hour is cutting a corner. Twenty four hours is a common minimum and longer in a humid week. Twenty four hours of drying time is a common minimum before sealing.

Epoxy grout sidesteps the question entirely and is worth knowing about. It is non porous, does not stain and never needs sealing, though it costs considerably more to install and is harder to work with, which is why it appears in renovations rather than retrofits. New installation rates appear at tiling services costs. Specify epoxy grout during a renovation rather than afterwards. Epoxy grout costs roughly three times cement grout to install and takes a tiler considerably longer. Epoxy is a decision made once at the tiling stage and not revisited.

When Regrouting Is the Answer

Regrouting means removing the existing grout and replacing it entirely. The old material is cut out with an oscillating tool or a grout saw to a consistent depth, the joints are cleaned out, and fresh grout is worked in and finished off, which produces a genuinely new result and not an improved version of the old one. Regrouting is a tiling job rather than a cleaning one. Most cleaners refer that work to a tiler.

The cost sits at $35 to $65 a square metre and the labour is almost all in the removal. Cutting out old grout without chipping the tile edges is slow, dusty work that requires a steady hand, and a rushed removal damages the very tiles the job was meant to preserve. Chipped tile edges cannot be repaired afterwards. That risk is why the rate looks high. One chipped tile edge in a prominent position undoes the whole job visually. An oscillating multi tool fitted with a grout blade is the standard removal method.

Regrouting becomes the honest answer once the grout has failed and not merely stained. Crumbling joints, sections missing, hollow sounding areas and grout you can pick out with a fingernail all indicate a material at the end of its life, and cleaning it achieves nothing durable. Shower work is covered at shower regrouting and leak repair costs. Failed grout is a water problem waiting some months to happen. Water passing failed grout reaches the waterproof membrane and eventually the substrate. What starts out as a cosmetic complaint ends up as a structural repair.

A shower recess is the most commonly regrouted area in any house. A recess takes the most water, the most temperature variation and the most structural movement of any area, and the horizontal joint where the wall meets the floor is where the failure usually begins. Membrane and sealing work is priced at waterproofing costs. That corner is the first place worth inspecting.

Silicone is not grout and the two need distinguishing. Internal corners, the wall to floor junction and the perimeter of a shower base all need silicone rather than grout because those joints move, and grout placed in a movement joint cracks by design. Silicone work is priced at caulking and silicone replacement costs. Grout in an internal corner is an installation error. Silicone accommodates movement while grout is rigid and cracks under it. The wall to floor junction moves as the building settles around it.

Partial regrouting is possible and rarely satisfying. New grout sitting beside old grout stays visible even in a perfectly matched colour, because the old material has aged and the new has not, so most people who start with one section end up doing the whole room. Do the whole area in one go or leave it entirely alone. The saving is always smaller than the mismatch looks. Colour matching new grout to aged grout is close to impossible even with the same product code. Batch variation and years of use both work against any attempt at matching.

Tile Material and Method

Porcelain is the most forgiving surface and the most common in modern homes. It is fired dense, absorbs almost nothing and tolerates strong chemicals and high pressure, so the cleaning is limited by the grout rather than by the tile. Porcelain is effectively impervious to water. The grout beside it is nothing of the sort. Batch variation makes matching new grout to aged grout close to impossible in practice. A niche, a hob and the wall tiles all need reaching inside one recess.

Ceramic behaves similarly on the glazed face and differently at the edges. The glaze protects the surface while the biscuit underneath is porous, which matters where a tile is chipped or where unglazed edges sit exposed. A chip absorbs everything the glaze would have repelled. Damaged tiles stain outward from the break. A chipped glaze exposes the biscuit, which then absorbs whatever reaches it. Porcelain absorbs under half a per cent of its own weight in water.

Natural stone changes the chemistry entirely and is where most damage happens. Marble, limestone and travertine all react to acid because of their calcium content, etching within seconds, while slate flakes apart and sandstone soaks up whatever reaches it, so an operator reaching for a standard acidic product ruins the floor. Masonry and restoration work is covered at stone masonry costs. Neutral pH products are the only safe option. Australian Standards for surface materials and testing are published by Standards Australia. Neutral pH means neither acidic nor alkaline enough to react with calcium carbonate.

Stone also needs sealing and not merely benefiting from it. An unsealed limestone or travertine floor absorbs every spill permanently, and the sealer there is doing structural work and not cosmetic work, which is why stone floors are resealed on a set schedule rather than whenever somebody happens to remember. Test the seal with water once a year. Water darkening the stone means resealing is due.

Textured and anti slip tiles clean more slowly and need it more often. The profile that provides grip also traps soiling in every recess, which means a brush instead of a flat pass and a longer job for the same area. Anti slip surfaces are covered at epoxy flooring costs. Expect a higher rate per square metre on profiled tiles. A brush attachment rather than a flat head is needed on any profiled surface. Impregnating rather than topical sealers are correct for almost all natural stone.

Polished and honed finishes show every imperfection afterwards. A polished porcelain or honed stone floor reveals swirl marks, chemical residue and uneven drying that a matte tile would hide completely, so the finishing pass matters every bit as much as the cleaning itself. Faults only appear when the light is low. Raking light from a low angle across a polished floor shows every mark. Checking in daylight from the far end of the room is the practical test. Profiled anti slip surfaces add roughly forty per cent to the time for the same area.

Floors, Showers and Outdoors

Floor work is where the per square metre rate makes sense. An open tiled living area, hallway or kitchen floor lets the machine head run continuously, which is genuinely efficient, and the rate falls as the area grows because the setup cost is spread across more metres. Large open floors offer the best value per metre. Larger open floors always run at the lower end of the band. Raking light across a polished floor reveals every single mark left behind.

Edges, corners and skirting are hand work regardless of the area. A spinner head cannot reach the perimeter, so the operator follows up with a hand tool along every wall, around every fixture and into every corner, and that detail work is a real part of the time. Ask specifically whether the edges and skirting lines sit inside the rate. Some quotes cover the open field only. Perimeter work on a large floor can take as long as the field itself. Hand tools rather than the machine head do all of that work.

Shower recesses are priced as a unit and not by area. A single recess at $180 to $450 reflects that it is small, awkward, entirely hand work and usually the worst grout in the house, so the square metre rate would be meaningless. Complete wet area rebuilds appear at bathroom renovation costs. Wall tiles, the floor, the hob and the niche all need reaching in a confined space. Kneeling work in a recess is slow regardless of skill. Moss and lichen release far more readily than absorbed indoor soiling does.

Outdoor tiles and paving are cheaper per square metre and a different problem. Moss, lichen, algae and general weathering respond well to pressure, the area is usually large and open, and there is no concern about water in the room. Exterior work is priced at pressure washing costs. Outdoor rates typically run $6 to $15 a square metre. Salt and chlorine both attack cement grout over years of exposure.

Pool surrounds carry their own considerations. Chlorinated water, salt, sunscreen residue and constant wet foot traffic degrade grout faster than anywhere else on a property, and anything used there has to be safe around the pool water itself. Pool surfaces are covered at pool tile and surface repair costs. Waterline tiles around a pool are a separate specialty. A balcony membrane failure shows up as damp in the ceiling of the room below. Sunlight and rain do part of the maintenance on any outdoor paving.

Balconies and terraces need care because of what sits underneath. A tiled balcony sitting over living space has a waterproof membrane directly below the tiles, and high pressure water forced into a failed joint finds its way straight through, which turns a routine cleaning job into a leak. Paving work is quoted at outdoor tiles and paving costs. Check every joint before any pressure is applied. By the time it appears the repair is a substantial one.

When You Need a Tiler

Cracked tiles are a replacement and not a cleaning matter. A crack running through a tile indicates either impact damage or movement in the substrate beneath, and the second reason means replacing the tile without addressing the cause simply repeats the outcome. Diagnose the cause before replacing anything. Movement cracks reappear in exactly the same place. Substrate movement traces a consistent line running across several tiles.

Drummy tiles are the more serious version of the same problem. A tile that sounds hollow when tapped has lost its bond to the substrate underneath, and a machine running over it can lift the tile entirely, so this gets identified before cleaning starts and not during it. Tap across the whole floor with a coin before work starts. The change in sound over a drummy tile is obvious. Tapping across a floor with a coin takes two minutes and identifies every drummy tile. Salts crystallise at the surface as the water carrying them evaporates.

Water appearing where it should not is a waterproofing failure. Damp appearing on the other side of a shower wall, a stain on the ceiling below a bathroom or swelling skirting outside a wet area all point at the membrane rather than the grout, and cleaning is entirely irrelevant to that problem. Leak repairs sit at shower leak repair costs. Address the water problem before anything cosmetic. Water tracks along a bearer or a slab and appears some distance from its source. Following the stain rarely leads you to the leak.

Efflorescence is a symptom worth understanding. The white crystalline deposit appearing along grout lines is mineral salt carried out by moisture moving through the substrate, and while it can certainly be removed, its presence means water is travelling somewhere it should not be. Removing it without a diagnosis is only temporary. The deposit returns within a few months. A proud tile edge takes every impact from a passing mop or foot.

Lippage and uneven tiles are installation faults and not maintenance issues. Where one tile sits proud of its neighbour the exposed edge chips, collects soiling and cannot be cleaned properly, and the only real fix available is relaying the affected area. Relaying an existing floor is priced at bathroom tiling costs. A clean highlights lippage rather than hiding it. Vinyl floor tiles and their adhesive are among the most common asbestos materials.

Asbestos backing is a genuine consideration in older floors. Vinyl tiles and some tile beds in houses built before the 1990s may well contain asbestos, and disturbing them is regulated work that requires a licensed removalist and not a cleaner. Workplace safety is administered by SafeWork NSW. Never let anybody grind an old floor of unknown composition. Testing costs a fraction of a mistake.

What Drives the Price

Area drives the rate downward rather than the total. A larger floor costs more overall and considerably less per square metre, because the setup, the travel and the pack down are all fixed costs spread across whatever area is being done. Have the whole house quoted in a single go rather than room by room. The marginal rate per metre improves quickly. Operators would far rather do one large job than three small ones.

Condition sets how many passes are needed. Lightly soiled grout cleans up in a single pass, while heavily neglected grout needs pre treatment, dwell time, a first pass, a second application and then a second pass, which comes to close to double the labour for exactly the same area. Send photographs of the very worst section before anybody quotes. It determines the quote more than the plan does. A second application on heavily soiled grout roughly doubles the chemical cost as well as the time. Photographs let an operator quote that honestly instead of guessing.

Grout line width and depth affect the work more than people expect. Wide joints in a rustic or outdoor tile hold considerably more soiling than a two millimetre line in modern rectified porcelain, and deeply recessed joints take longer again to reach properly. Wide joints cost more per square metre to clean. Narrow modern joints are quick by comparison. A rustic terracotta with ten millimetre joints holds several times the soiling of a rectified porcelain. Joint geometry is a real cost driver.

Access and water availability shape the job in units and upper floors. A ground floor property with an outside tap and driveway access suits a truck mounted machine, while a fourth floor apartment needs a portable unit carried up in separate pieces with hoses run through the building. Confirm the access situation at the time you make the booking. Access determines which equipment the operator brings. Ten millimetre joints hold several times the soiling that a two millimetre joint does. Pool surrounds need resealing more often than any interior floor.

Sealing choice is the biggest single variable in a quote. Cleaning alone, cleaning with a penetrating sealer and cleaning with colour sealing all sit at genuinely different prices, and comparing two quotes without knowing which of the three each one includes tells you nothing at all. Name the sealing option you actually want in the written brief. That is where most of the confusion between quotes comes from. A cleaning quote and a colour sealing quote are answering two entirely different questions. Portable units take considerably longer than truck mounted ones for the same result.

Sydney Metro Costs

Sydney has the deepest market for this work in the state and enough specialists that comparing three quotes is straightforward. Rates reach the upper end of the national range, driven by operating costs rather than by any difference in method. The variable across the metropolitan area is the tile itself, since an apartment with modern rectified porcelain, a mid century home with original ceramic and a renovated terrace with natural stone each need a different approach and a different chemical. Rectified porcelain with two millimetre joints is the fastest surface in the trade. Original nineteen fifties ceramic with wide joints is the slowest.

Apartment work introduces constraints that have nothing to do with tiles. Portable equipment instead of truck mounted, lift bookings, loading dock windows, water access from inside the unit and building manager approval all take arranging beforehand, and a job that would be perfectly simple at ground level turns into a half day logistics exercise. Confirm what the building itself requires well before booking a date. Weekday mornings are frequently the only slot. Water access from inside a unit means running a hose through the apartment. Protecting the flooring on that route is part of the job.

Older housing across the inner and middle suburbs raises the stone question more often. Original tessellated verandah tiles, terrazzo, slate entries and unsealed sandstone all turn up regularly in period homes, and every one of them needs a neutral approach and an operator who recognises what they are looking at. Identify the tile material properly before the booking is made. A wrong chemical on a heritage floor is unrecoverable. Running a hose through an apartment means protecting the flooring on that route.

Newer apartments and estates are the most straightforward work in the city. Large format rectified porcelain with narrow joints, modern grout under a decade old and good access make for a predictable job at the lower end of each band. Prices across those areas sit toward the bottom of every band. Results on those floors are also far more consistent. Narrow joints and modern grout mean less to clean and less to go wrong. Tessellated and terrazzo floors are entirely unforgiving of the wrong chemical.

Regional NSW Costs

Regional rates run below Sydney, though travel narrows the gap and the minimum callout looms larger. Specialists are fewer and cover much wider districts, so a single bathroom in a country town may not be viable on its own and works far better combined with neighbours or with other rooms in the house. Ask which day they cover your town. Fitting into an existing route helps considerably. A specialist covering four towns may only reach your area fortnightly. Booking around their route and not your preference gets you seen.

Humidity through the northern coastal districts changes the maintenance picture. Grout through those areas grows mould faster than anywhere else in the state, and the interval between cleans is genuinely shorter regardless of how well the original job was done. Mould testing is covered at mould inspection and testing costs. Ventilation matters more than any product applied.

Hard water inland leaves deposits that coastal areas rarely see. Mineral scale builds on tiles and grout in shower recesses across much of central and western New South Wales, and removing it needs an acidic product used carefully instead of more scrubbing. Bathroom preventive work sits at bathroom mould removal and prevention costs. Water hardness explains much of the regional variation. Scale builds as a hard grey film across tiles and grout in shower recesses. Grout absorbs liquid, oil and pigment steadily across years of use.

Rural properties on tank water raise a practical question. A truck mounted machine uses a substantial volume, and an operator may need to bring water or draw from a tank you would rather they did not, so this is worth settling when booking. Confirm the water supply arrangement well ahead of the day. Tank levels matter a great deal through a dry season. A truck mounted unit can use several hundred litres across a large job. Tank levels through a dry summer make that a real conversation.

Availability tightens after flood events across affected districts. Restoration work takes priority for months and routine cleaning waits behind it, particularly through the Northern Rivers and the Hunter. Restoration after water damage appears at flood and water damage cleaning costs. Build several extra weeks into any booking made in those districts.

What to Look Out For

Insist on a free test patch before you commit to anything. Cement based grout is porous, so years of staining sit within the material rather than on it, and a machine clean removes what is held in the pores rather than restoring the original colour. On most floors that produces a dramatic result and on some it produces very little. Fifteen minutes on one square metre in the worst area tells you whether you are buying a clean, a colour seal or a regrout, and anybody promising a specific outcome without testing has not looked at your grout. Nobody tells a buyer that the original grout was grey rather than white.

Establish which sealing option each quote includes. A penetrating sealer soaks in and does not change the appearance, while colour sealing is a pigmented coating that recolours and can chip or wear at traffic points. Sealing also needs the grout completely dry, so two visits is correct rather than inconvenient. A test on one square metre takes fifteen minutes and settles the question.

Name the tile material before anybody arrives with a chemical. Calcium based stone reacts to acid within seconds and the mark never comes back, slate flakes apart under aggressive treatment, and sandstone soaks up whatever touches it. Porcelain tolerates almost anything while the grout beside it does not. Machines of that size will not fit in the boot of a sedan.

Know when the answer is a tiler rather than a cleaner. Crumbling or missing grout has failed structurally and a high pressure machine removes more of what remains, drummy tiles that sound hollow can lift entirely under a machine head, and cracked tiles usually indicate substrate movement that will repeat. Efflorescence means water is travelling through the substrate, and damp on the far side of a shower wall is a waterproofing failure and not a grout problem. Settle that at the quoting stage rather than on the day.

Raise the wastewater question before the booking is finalised. Recovered water belongs in a holding tank rather than running off into a garden bed or down a stormwater drain. On a tiled balcony over living space, check the joints before any pressure is applied, since water forced through a failed joint reaches the membrane below and turns a clean into a leak. Never let anybody grind or aggressively machine an unknown floor in a house built before the 1990s. Rust from a metal object left on wet tile is one of the few permanent marks. A single cracked tile in isolation is more likely impact than movement.

What to Look for in a Quote in NSW

A tile and grout quote should state the area in square metres, name the tile and grout type, and say plainly whether the figure covers cleaning only, cleaning with a penetrating sealer, or cleaning with colour sealing. It should confirm whether edges, corners and skirting lines are included or whether the rate covers the open field only, state the minimum callout, and set out how many visits the job requires given sealing needs dry grout. A current certificate of currency for public liability should sit on the document alongside the price. The sealing option and the edge work are the two items most likely to make two quotes look different when they are not. An exhaust fan running twenty minutes after a shower changes everything.

Give every operator the same information. Each operator needs photographs of the worst area under natural light, the total square metres, the tile material, the grout line width and whether the room has ever been sealed. Hand all of them the same package unchanged. Grout always photographs better than it looks in person.

Ask what result they expect and why. An operator who explains that your grout will return to grey rather than white, and shows you why on a test patch, is worth more than one promising a transformation. Listen out for the qualified answer and not the confident one. Confident promises made without a test are the warning sign.

Settle the test patch, the sealing option, the tile material and the edge work before anybody sets up. See the outcome on a square metre, decide which sealing you are buying, name every surface, and confirm what the rate covers. Related work is priced at silicone replacement costs and at end of lease cleaning costs, with the wider trade at house cleaning costs. Once all of that is agreed, what arrives on the day matches what you were shown on the test patch.