What Is a “Spot Cleaning” of Walls?

Remember when your walls used to be white?

If you’re like me, that was a loooong time ago.

But over time, all walls eventually develop a thin buildup of dirt that discolors it to off-white.

Luckily our professional house cleaners can usually resurrect your walls to their former, gleaming white glory.

The question is though, do you need just a spot cleaning of your walls, which is included in your cleaning, or a complete wall washing add-on, which costs extra?

To answer some of your common questions about wall cleaning, in today’s post we thought we’d explain our definition of “spot cleaning” to remove any confusion.

Spot Cleaning

All your Scrubbi house cleaning appointments include a “spot cleaning services” of walls.

But what exactly is a “spot cleaning”?

It’s hard to say exactly since we don’t have a hard definition of it, but generally, a spot cleaning of walls would be when there are only 5 to 6 small areas that need to be cleaned and also takes no more than 10 minutes to clean.

So things like some fingerprints, some crayon marks, and maybe some food splatter in the kitchen in one or two areas would be examples of a spot cleaning.

This is what a wall that needs spot cleaning looks like:

Even this wall (seen below) can be classified as a spot cleaning if it’s just crayon (or something else that easily comes off) easily comes off AND if it’s just this one small area and not throughout the whole entire house.

The key thing to remember is that a spot cleaning of all the walls shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes or so – in total. A spot cleaning is considered as a touch up and not a full cleaning.

So in a nutshell, if takes anything more that 10 minutes or so (in total) to have all the walls in your home clean, were entering into wall cleaning add-on territory.

When You Probably Need a Wall Cleaning Add-on

They Haven’t Been Cleaned in Forever

Wall cleaning add-ons are for when your walls have marks, fingerprints, splatter, and other substances have been built up over several years.

If you think your walls will take more than 5 minutes to clean, you’ll need a wall cleaning add-on.

Moving In or Out

Another situation we’ve seen where a wall cleaning was required is during move outs or move ins, particularly in homes that have been rented out and especially when someone’s been smoking inside the home.

Dirty walls are something that most of us don’t notice until all the furniture in a room is gone.

That’s because all those marks and fingerprints tend to blend in with everything else in that room, fooling our eyes into thinking our walls are actually sparkling clean. Remove that distraction and you get a different picture.

What Happens If I Didn’t Purchase a Wall Cleaning Add-on and I Need One?

Normally, as a cleaning package from Scrubbi includes the spot cleaning services, the maid will spot clean your walls automatically because it is included in your appointment.

If you need a wall cleaning but didn’t ask the maid specifically to specifically clean the walls, we assume that you do NOT want a wall cleaning. That’s because customers are specifically asked before they book if they need any add-ons like wall washing, window washing etc.

If, however, she finds that your walls need a proper wall washing AND you indicated to the maid that you would like the walls cleaned, someone from our operations or customer support department will give you a quick call to see if you’d like to purchase the wall cleaning option before the maid cleans the rest of the walls. If time permits, we can do it that same day, but because we schedule based on what you indicated you needed, we may not have time that same day if the cleaner has a following appointment after yours.

When NOT to Get A Wall Cleaning Add-on

Smoking in your home will turn your white walls into a brownish/yellowish color like so:

a half cleaned door

And even after it is cleaned, the nicotine stains can still seep through. Here’s an image of a wall AFTER it’s been stripped of the wallpaper and cleaned thoroughly. As you can see, the nicotine is still seeping out of the walls.

Other types of smoke damage on walls is when you get a small fire inside your home, usually in the kitchen.

At this point we’d highly recommend NOT getting our wall washing add-on. Instead have your walls cleaned by a professional home restoration company.

Nicotine Wall Cleaning Tip

Want to try cleaning the Nicotine off the walls yourself. Try using vinegar as a cleaner and deodorizer.

Want to have your walls cleaned for your next appointment?

Just call 1-877-313-4820 and talk to Sales or email us at hi@scrubbi.com.