Carpet cleaning in Kensington
Hot water extraction priced by the room, from £36 for a bedroom, in flats and houses across the Royal Borough. Rugs are cleaned where they lie.
Prices checked October 2026
Rather talk? 020 3734 1438, any time.
Carpets in the Royal Borough are mostly in flats (82.9% of households at the 2021 Census). Carpet cleaning here is priced by the room, from £36 a bedroom, by hot water extraction.
A rug is cleaned on the floor it sits on and never taken away. Drying usually takes a few hours and depends on how much air moves through the room, so a basement room and a bright bedroom on the same job can dry at different speeds.
Carpet prices by type of home in Kensington and Chelsea
| Home | Share of households, 2021 | How the carpets are priced |
|---|---|---|
| Flat in a purpose-built block | 56.7% | Bedrooms at £36, the living room at £43, a hallway at £22 |
| Flat in a converted or shared house | 23.5% | The same rooms, plus £41 for a flight inside a split-level flat |
| Terraced house | 12.8% | Rooms on each floor, £41 a flight and £9 a landing |
| Semi-detached house | 3.1% | Rooms, flights and landings; a through lounge is £61 |
Share figures are from the Census (Nomis table TS044) for the whole borough. A two-bedroom flat in a block with a carpeted hallway comes to two bedrooms, the living room and the hallway. A terraced house of the same size adds a flight and a landing for every floor above the ground, so a house costs more than a flat with the same number of bedrooms. A rug on a wood floor is priced by size: £35 up to 3 square metres and £51 above that.
Period floors and listed buildings
Nearly three quarters of the borough is covered by 38 conservation areas, the council says, and it counts over 3,800 listed buildings. In a listed building, works as small as removing floorboards or changing skirtings need listed building consent. A carpet clean lifts nothing and changes nothing: the carpet stays fitted and the boards underneath stay down.
The council publishes conservation area appraisals for Ladbroke, Pembridge, Colville and Norland in Notting Hill, and for Cheyne, Royal Hospital and Sloane Square in Chelsea. The Kensington Palace appraisal was adopted as recently as 17 July 2025. Where a house in one of these areas has a carpeted staircase, each flight and each landing is priced on its own line, and the cleaner works down from the top landing so nobody walks on a clean, damp flight.
Basement rooms and drying time
Basements are a planning topic in their own right here. The council’s Basements SPD (April 2016) limits a basement to half of each garden or open part of a site and describes lightwells as the most obvious outside sign of a basement. A room lit only through a lightwell has less moving air than a first-floor bedroom, and carpet drying depends on ventilation.
Open the lightwell window or door if it is safe to, keep any extractor running, and expect a basement carpet to stay damp for longer than the few hours an upstairs room usually takes. Walk on it in clean socks if you must, and keep furniture off it until it is dry to the touch.
Parking the carpet machine
Nobody can buy a trade permit here, and the borough has no visitor vouchers, so during controlled hours the cleaner’s vehicle has to use a pay-by-phone bay or a car park off the street. The council’s hourly rate depends on the tariff zone and on whether the vehicle runs on electric, petrol or diesel, and it ranges between £1.90 and £8.40, with 10p added to every session. A carpet job is shorter than a move-out clean, so the parking line is usually small.
Carpet cleaning prices in the Royal Borough
Every area has its own price: £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £61 a through lounge, £22 a hallway, £41 a flight of stairs and £9 a landing. One-off work starts at £67. Sofas, armchairs and mattresses can be added at the same visit from the price list.
If there is no free parking on the street, parking is added at the day’s cost and never more than £40.
| What | Price | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|
| Bedroom carpet | £36 | Per item |
| Living room carpet | £43 | Per item |
| Through lounge carpet | £61 | Per item |
| Stair carpet (flight) | £41 | Per flight |
| Hallway carpet | £22 | Per item |
| Landing carpet | £9 | Per item |
| Rug up to 3 sq m | £35 | Per item |
| Rug over 3 sq m | £51 | Per item |
One-off work starts at £67.
The carpet clean, step by step
The cleaner vacuums each carpet first to lift grit out of the pile, treats marks and traffic lanes, then cleans by hot water extraction: hot water and a cleaning solution go into the carpet and are drawn straight back out with the dirt. Rugs are cleaned where they lie, on the floor they cover. Keep the water and electricity on, because the machine needs both.
Clear small things off the floor before the cleaner arrives. Beds, wardrobes and sofas are cleaned around. When the cleaner leaves, open the windows and leave the heating on low if the day is cold; that is what brings the drying time down. More on how we work across the city is on the London carpet cleaning page.
Other cleaning in the Royal Borough
For the same address, end of tenancy cleaning in Kensington and oven cleaning each have a page of their own. Kensington cleaning services covers regular and deep cleans at home.
- Every cleaning service in Kensington
- End of tenancy cleaning in Kensington
- Oven cleaning in Kensington
Carpet cleaning near Kensington
The boroughs around Kensington and Chelsea have their own carpet pages, with the same room prices.
Questions about carpet cleaning in Kensington and Chelsea
Do you take rugs away to clean them?
Never. Rugs are cleaned where they lie, in your home, and priced by size: £35 up to 3 square metres and £51 above that.
How long before I can use the room?
Drying usually takes a few hours and depends on ventilation. A sunny bedroom with a window open dries faster than a basement room off a lightwell, so plan the clean for a morning if you need the room that night.
Can you clean the stairs in a converted house?
The stairs inside your own flat, yes, at £41 a flight. The common stair outside your front door is shared, so book it only with the agreement of the freeholder or managing agent.
Is a listed building a problem for carpet cleaning?
The council’s list of works that need consent in a listed building includes removing floorboards and changing skirtings. A carpet clean does neither: the carpet stays fitted, the boards stay down, and the cleaner works from the surface.
Can the carpets be done when I move out?
Yes. Added to an end of tenancy clean they are £29 a bedroom and £36 the living room; the Kensington end of tenancy page has the full move-out prices.
Ring 020 3734 1438 and tell us which rooms are carpeted.