Every home and shopfront in Britain has the same quiet problem: glass that gets dirty again within weeks. Rain, road dust, pollen and sea air see to that, which is why window cleaning is one of the most dependable small businesses you can start. Customers need the service every four to eight weeks, the work repeats itself, and a well-built round of regular customers pays you month after month.
It is also one of the cheapest trades to enter. You can start with a bucket, a squeegee and a ladder, earn while you learn, and upgrade to a professional water-fed pole system once the round is paying for itself.
Why Window Cleaning Works as a Business
Most trades sell one-off jobs. Window cleaning sells a round: once a customer is on your books and happy with the clean, they rarely shop around, because switching means finding someone new, agreeing a price again and waiting for a first clean. That loyalty is the whole business model.
The demand is steady rather than seasonal. Homes need cleaning all year, and shops, offices, schools and pubs all budget for regular glass cleaning. Bad weather slows a day here and there, but it does not remove the demand.
The Two Ways to Clean Windows
Traditional cleaning
The classic method uses a squeegee, applicator, bucket and ladder, with the glass cleaned and dried by hand. It is cheap to start, gives excellent results on ground-floor work and shopfronts, and is the best way to learn the trade. Its limits are height and speed: ladder work above the first floor carries real risk, and it is slower than a pole system on larger houses.
Water-fed pole cleaning
A water-fed pole system brushes purified water onto the glass from the ground and lets it dry spot-free, with no squeegee needed. Because the water is deionised, it dries without marks. Poles reach three or four storeys from the ground, so you rarely need a ladder at all, which is safer, faster and increasingly what commercial clients expect. The trade-off is the upfront cost of the pole, filtration unit and tank, plus ongoing resin and filter costs.
Startup Costs
A lean traditional start is genuinely cheap, while a professional van-mounted pole setup is a serious but still modest investment. Typical UK figures look like this:
- Traditional starter kit (squeegee, applicator, bucket, cloths, scraper, solution): £60 to £80
- Extension ladder and stabiliser: £130 to £500
- Water-fed pole: from around £180, plus £80 to £100 for a DI filter vessel
- Reverse osmosis (RO) purification unit (for higher-volume work): £300 to £400
- Van-mounted tank and system (full professional setup): £1,000 to £3,000
- Second-hand small van: £2,000 to £5,000, plus van insurance of around £500 a year
- Public liability insurance: roughly £60 to £120 a year for a sole trader
- Website, domain and leaflets: £50 to £150 to get started
That puts a realistic lean start at £300 to £1,000 if you already have a car, and a full professional setup with a van and pole system at £3,000 to £5,000. Start lean and let the business fund its own upgrades.
How to Start, Step by Step
Step 1: Set up as a sole trader
Most window cleaners start as sole traders, which costs nothing to set up. If your self-employed income passes the £1,000 trading allowance in a tax year, you must register for Self Assessment with HMRC, by 5 October in your second tax year of trading. Keep business money separate from personal spending from day one. For a wider grounding in the process, read our guide on how to do a business in the United Kingdom.
Step 2: Check whether you need a licence
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, no specific licence is required to clean windows. Scotland is the exception: window cleaners there must hold a licence from their local council, which lasts up to three years and involves checks and insurance requirements, with fines of up to £2,500 for working without one.
Step 3: Get insured before your first job
Public liability insurance is not a legal requirement in the UK, but for work on other people’s property it is effectively essential, and commercial clients will usually ask for proof of cover. A sole trader can expect to pay around £60 to £120 a year. If you take on an employee, employers’ liability insurance of at least £5 million becomes a legal requirement. Our guide to insurance for the self-employed explains the main policies in more depth.
Step 4: Choose your equipment honestly
Do not buy a van system before you have customers. Start with a traditional kit and a good ladder, learn to clean quickly and streak-free, and add a pole system once you have twenty or thirty regular customers.
Step 5: Price the job, not the hour
Residential window cleaning is almost always priced per property, not per hour, because customers want a fixed figure they can budget for. Walk the property or price it from photos, count the windows, and factor in access, height, frames and sills, and whether it is a first clean or a regular clean. First cleans always cost more, because neglected glass takes far longer. The pricing principles are the same as for any home service, as our guide to how to price a cleaning business in the UK shows: know your costs, price the outcome, and do not race to the bottom.
Step 6: Build a tight round
A round is a group of customers in the same small area, cleaned on a fixed cycle. Density is everything: twenty customers on two streets earn far more per day than twenty customers spread across a town, because you are not burning time and fuel driving between jobs. Canvass street by street, leaflet the houses around every customer you win, and offer a first-clean discount that converts into a regular slot.
Step 7: Systemise payments and scheduling
Chasing cash door to door wastes the time you could spend cleaning. Set customers up on bank transfer, standing order or a card-payment link, and send a short message the day before each clean. A simple round-management app or a well-kept spreadsheet is enough at the start.
What You Can Charge
Prices vary by region, with London and the South East at the top, but current UK figures give a reliable guide for regular external cleans:
- One-bed flat: £8 to £12
- Two-bed terrace: £8 to £15
- Three-bed semi: £15 to £25 (the UK average sits around £18)
- Four-bed detached: £25 to £40
- Townhouse (three storeys): £25 to £45
- Large property (five or more bedrooms): £40 to £75 and beyond
- Inside and outside combined: roughly double the outside-only price
First cleans typically run 50 to 100 percent higher than the regular price, and commercial work is usually priced per hour (£35 to £60) or on a monthly contract.
Earning Potential
The maths of a round is straightforward. A solo cleaner charging an average of £18 per house and cleaning around 20 houses a day, four days a week, brings in roughly £1,440 a week in revenue. Fuel, insurance, resin and tax all come off the top, but it shows why experienced self-employed cleaners report £20,000 to £40,000 a year, with the top end belonging to those with dense rounds and commercial contracts.
Employed window cleaners earn around £28,000 a year on average according to current job-market data. Self-employment pays more precisely because you keep the margin, but you also carry the risk: quiet weeks, bad weather and customer churn are yours to manage. Growth comes from density (fill the gaps in your streets), frequency (move customers to four-weekly cleans) and add-ons such as gutter clearing and conservatory roof cleans, which all sell to the same customers.
How to Get Customers
Your first thirty customers will come from shoe leather, not advertising:
- Canvassing and leafleting. Knock on doors and leaflet street by street in areas with plenty of glass and easy parking. A tidy uniform and a short, honest pitch beat a clever advert.
- Google Business Profile. Free, and vital, because “window cleaner near me” is how new movers and frustrated customers search. Ask happy customers for reviews.
- Local Facebook groups. Before-and-after photos of filthy glass turned spotless do the selling for you, and our post on promoting your business with video marketing covers the basics.
- Shops and small businesses. Offer a weekly shopfront clean at a sharp price. Shops pay regularly, and one clean parade advertises you to every passer-by.
Mistakes That Kill New Window Cleaning Businesses
Three mistakes end most new rounds early: underpricing (charging £10 for a forty-minute house leaves less than minimum wage once fuel, insurance and tax are counted, and raising prices later loses the customers you worked to win), working uninsured or untrained at height, and accepting scattered jobs that destroy your daily earnings through driving time. Price properly from the first clean, insure yourself, and build streets, not postcodes.
Final Word
Window cleaning is not glamorous, but it is one of the few businesses where a few hundred pounds, a strong work ethic and a tidy round can turn into a reliable full-time income within a year. Start lean, insure yourself, price for profit rather than volume, and build your customers street by street. The glass will always get dirty again, and that is exactly why the business works.