Apartment Cleaning in Geneva

What is the difference between regular cleaning and a one-off deep clean?

They are separate services and mixing them up is the most common reason people feel disappointed by a first visit.

Regular cleaning maintains a state already reached. It covers what is seen and touched: floors, bathrooms, kitchen surfaces, dust, bins, and interior glass depending on frequency. Its strength is repetition — a flat cleaned weekly never develops old limescale or baked-on grease, so each visit stays short and the standard stays high. Most Geneva households settle on weekly, or fortnightly for a couple without children.

A deep clean starts from accumulated backlog. It treats what routine work does not touch: inside cupboards, tops of wardrobes, full window cleaning including frames and rebates, blinds and shutter boxes, heavy descaling, oven and extractor hood degreasing, radiators front and back, ventilation grilles, light fittings. It usually needs two people for a full day and it resets the baseline so that regular cleaning can then work as intended. If your flat has not been cleaned thoroughly in a year, a first deep clean is honest advice rather than an upsell.

Why does it matter whether the cleaner is properly declared?

In Switzerland, employing someone to clean your home means an employment relationship with social insurance obligations. When you pay an individual cash, those obligations do not disappear — they sit with you as the employer, whether or not you were aware of it.

The practical consequences fall in three places. If the person is injured in your home, an undeclared worker has no accident cover for it, and the exposure lands on the household. If damage occurs — a broken vitroceramic hob, water damage to a downstairs flat, a marked parquet — there is no professional liability policy to draw on. And if the arrangement comes to light, the unpaid contributions are recoverable from the employer.

Working with a company moves all of that off your household. The cleaner is our employee, declared, with accident cover and professional liability insurance, and our company registration number appears on the quote. It is a reasonable thing to ask any provider for, and the absence of a clear answer is itself informative. It is also why an hourly rate offered privately is not really comparable to a company quote: the two do not carry the same risks.

How often should an apartment be cleaned?

Weekly suits most occupied flats and is the rhythm at which nothing accumulates. Fortnightly works for a couple without children or for someone travelling frequently, provided the flat is tidy between visits — cleaning is not tidying, and a cleaner who spends half the visit moving objects cleans half the flat.

Twice weekly makes sense in three situations: a family with young children, a pet that sheds, or a flat with large glazed areas and a cat. Under those conditions a weekly visit is spent recovering rather than maintaining, and the second visit costs less than the standard it buys back.

There is also a rhythm nobody plans for and everybody needs: the one-off. A flat before guests arrive, after a party, after building work in the block, at the end of a holiday let, or before an inventory. These are quoted individually and do not require a contract. We would rather do a genuinely useful one-off than sell a subscription that does not fit your life.

How is access to your home organised?

This is the question people hesitate to ask and it deserves a direct answer rather than reassurance. Three arrangements are possible and the one chosen is written into the quote.

You are present at each visit, which suits a daytime weekly clean and is what most people begin with. Or you entrust a set of keys, which is identified by a code rather than by your address, kept away from the vehicle, and issued only to the cleaner assigned to your home. Or access runs through a system you control — a door code, a key box, a smart lock — which leaves the ability to grant and revoke access entirely with you.

In every case the name of your regular cleaner is given to you, and a replacement is never improvised: if the usual person is away, you are told before the visit rather than after. That continuity is not only about trust, it is about quality — someone who knows your flat knows which tap scales up, which floor cannot take water, and which room matters most to you.

What surfaces need special care?

Most irreversible damage in a Geneva flat comes not from an accident but from an ordinary product used on a surface that cannot take it. Four cases account for the majority.

Marble and polished limestone tolerate no acid at all: a bathroom descaler, a vinegar-based cleaner, even lemon juice leaves a permanently dull mark. Oiled parquet must not be washed with plenty of water or an alkaline detergent, which dissolves the finish and lightens the grain. Polished concrete is damaged by acids and abrasives, which open the porosity and lock stains in permanently. Brushed stainless steel scratches against the direction of the brushing and the mark does not come out.

So coverings are recorded at the quote visit rather than guessed at on the first morning, and where identification is uncertain we test on an inconspicuous area before treating the whole surface. That caution costs a quarter of an hour; refinishing a marble floor does not.

What is not included in apartment cleaning?

Being explicit about limits is more useful than a long list of inclusions, because it is the unstated exclusions that cause friction.

Not included: tidying and putting away personal belongings, which is a different job and one that only you can do correctly; laundry and ironing beyond what is agreed separately; childcare or pet care of any kind; and window cleaning at height requiring a cherry picker, which needs different equipment and insurance cover.

Also outside the service: repairs and maintenance. A dripping tap, a blocked drain, a silicone seal where mould has penetrated the material, a scratched floor. We report these rather than work around them silently, because a mouldy seal cannot be cleaned — it has to be replaced — and telling you is more useful than scrubbing it again each week. Finally, we do not move heavy furniture single-handed: a wardrobe that needs shifting is agreed in advance so the cleaner is not injured doing it alone.

Products, allergies and households with children

Products and equipment are always ours, including the vacuum cleaner, so nothing has to be bought or stored by you. Standard range covers a normal household, and two adjustments are common enough to be worth mentioning.

For allergies and sensitive households, we use low-fragrance products and can work with unscented ones on request. It is worth knowing that a strong smell is not evidence of cleanliness — perfume is added to cleaning products for perception, not performance, and its absence changes nothing about the result. If someone in the household has a respiratory condition, say so at the quote stage rather than after the first visit.

For homes with small children, the practical points are the sequence and the drying time rather than the chemistry: floors are done last so the room is not walked on while wet, and we avoid cleaning a child's room during a nap. If you prefer specific products of your own, we will use them provided they suit your surfaces — with the one caveat that we will say so if a product you have bought risks damaging your flooring.

How do you compare two apartment cleaning offers in Geneva?

An hourly rate on its own is not comparable to anything, and a low one is often the most expensive option once you account for what sits behind it. Five questions settle it, and all five should be answerable in writing.

Is the cleaner declared, with accident cover and professional liability insurance, and does the company registration number appear on the quote? Is it a fixed price per visit or an open-ended hourly rate — and if hourly, is there a stated maximum? What exactly is in scope, room by room, and what is explicitly excluded? Will it be the same person each visit, and how are absences handled? And is there any minimum commitment period?

On the last point our answer is none: no minimum term, no notice period, no registration fee. If a provider requires a long commitment to give you a reasonable rate, the commitment is protecting them from something. We would rather earn the next visit each time.

Effect of frequency and options

A regular contract costs less per visit than a one-off, and the gap is not a sales device: in a home cleaned weekly there is never established limescale or baked-on grease to recover. Ironing is offered with no hourly surcharge, within the agreed time.