Post-Renovation Cleaning: What It Involves & Costs (2026)

The contractor hands you the keys, the flat looks finished — and then you run a finger along a shelf and it comes away grey. Renovation dust is a different animal from household dust: cement, plaster and wood particles ground fine enough to hang in the air for weeks and settle inside places you did not know were open. Before the mattress and boxes arrive, the flat needs a specific kind of clean. Here is what post-renovation cleaning actually involves, what it costs in Singapore, and whether you can realistically do it yourself.

Why reno dust is a different problem

Hacking, drilling, sanding and skim-coating produce mineral dust with particles far finer than everyday household dust. It travels on air currents through the whole flat — including rooms that were never touched — and settles as a film on every horizontal surface, inside cabinets and drawers, in window tracks, on top of door frames, and inside aircon fan coils and ceiling fans. It is also mildly abrasive: wipe it dry across a glossy surface and you can leave micro-scratches.

Beyond dust, a just-renovated flat carries paint splatter on floors and glass, cement and grout haze on new tiles, silicone smears around wet areas, adhesive residue from protective films and stickers on new fittings, and the odd screw or tile shard in corners. None of this yields to a regular mop-and-wipe routine — which is why post-reno cleaning exists as its own service category.

What a proper post-renovation clean covers

Scope varies between companies, so always get it itemised, but a thorough job typically includes:

• Full dust extraction — industrial vacuuming of floors, walls, ceilings, ledges and built-in carpentry, inside and out, before any wet cleaning (wetting dust first just makes paste).
• Sticker and film removal — protective films on windows, appliances and fittings, plus the adhesive residue they leave.
• Paint, cement and grout residue removal — careful scraping and appropriate chemicals on floors, tiles and glass without damaging new finishes.
• Cabinet interiors — every drawer, shelf and wardrobe wiped out so they are actually ready for clothes and crockery.
• Windows, grilles and tracks — often the dustiest zone in the flat.
• Bathrooms and kitchen — descaling splatter off new sanitaryware, polishing taps and glass.
• Final damp-wipe and floor finish — a top-to-bottom, back-to-front pass so cleaned surfaces are not re-contaminated.

Things usually excluded unless specified: exterior window faces beyond arm’s reach, aircon internal chemical cleaning (a separate aircon service), curtain or sofa shampooing, and haze on natural stone that needs specialist polishing. Ask specifically if any of these matter to you.

What it costs in Singapore

Pricing is usually by flat size and condition rather than hourly. As a rough 2026 guide, a typical HDB post-renovation clean commonly lands somewhere in the region of S$250 to S$600 or more — a 3-room flat at the lower end, a 5-room or executive flat higher, and condos and landed properties above that, especially with extensive glass or outdoor areas. Heavy dust from major hacking, or a long gap where dust has been walked through the flat, pushes quotes up.

Treat these as ballparks and get two or three itemised quotes. The cheapest quote with a vague scope frequently means a fast surface wipe that leaves cabinet interiors and tracks untouched — exactly the places you paid to have cleaned. For context on how cleaning services are priced generally, see our comparison of cleaner costs in Singapore, part-time vs agency.

DIY: possible, but know what you’re signing up for

You can do this yourself, and for a lightly renovated flat (paint and vinyl overlay, say, rather than full hacking) it is realistic. Budget a full weekend for a small flat and equip properly: a vacuum with a fine-dust filter, plenty of microfibre cloths, a plastic scraper for paint and stickers, appropriate cleaners for glass and tile haze, and an N95-type mask — breathing fine mineral dust for hours is genuinely unpleasant.

Work in the professional order: dry vacuum everything top-down first, then damp-wipe, then floors last, room by room from the far end towards the door. The common DIY failure is sequencing — mopping first, then opening a cabinet and re-dusting the wet floor. The other is underestimating the aircon: if the units ran during the reno, the fan coils have ingested dust and deserve a professional service, whoever does the rest of the flat.

Timing it within your reno-to-move-in sequence

The right slot is narrow but important: after all trades are done and major defects rectified, and before furniture, appliances and boxes arrive. An empty flat lets cleaners reach every surface quickly; furniture instantly turns a one-day job into a slower, costlier one and creates hiding places for dust that will keep resurfacing for weeks.

Practically, that means scheduling the clean into the tail of your renovation timeline — typically right after handover and your defect-checking walkthrough, and a few days before your movers deliver. If minor touch-up works are still pending, either wait or accept a second small clean after the touch-ups. And note that post-reno cleaning is a different job from a standard pre-move-in clean of a resale or rental unit; if your place was not renovated, our guide to cleaning a new home before moving in is the one you want.

Expect a second, lighter round

However thorough the first clean, renovation dust has a habit of reappearing for a few weeks. Fine particles settle out of the air gradually, aircon systems exhale what they ingested during the works, and every drilled picture-hook or touch-up visit releases a little more. Plan for a lighter follow-up wipe-down two to four weeks after moving in — a normal cleaning session, not another specialist job — and run the aircon on fan mode with doors open for a few hours before your first night if the flat smells of paint and sealant. New-finish odours fade fastest with steady ventilation, so keep windows open as much as the weather allows in the first fortnight.

How to brief a cleaning company well

• State the reno scope — full hack vs partial — and flat size; send photos of current dust levels.
• Ask exactly what is included: cabinet interiors, window tracks, sticker removal, high ledges, balcony.
• Confirm crew size and duration — a proper HDB job is usually a small team for the better part of a day.
• Check chemicals against your finishes — natural stone, matte black fittings and some laminates need gentler products.
• Do a joint walkthrough at the end before the crew leaves, checking inside cabinets and along tracks, not just open surfaces.

The bottom line

Post-renovation cleaning is the unglamorous final step that makes a renovation actually liveable: aggressive dust extraction, residue removal and a cabinet-by-cabinet wipe-down, done in the empty window between handover and move-in. Budget a few hundred dollars for professional help on a typical flat, or a hard-working weekend and proper equipment if you DIY. Either way, do it before the boxes arrive — you only get that empty flat once. Want it handled professionally? Get matched with a post-reno cleaning team below.