Cleaner salary UK: what cleaning jobs pay in 2026
The real numbers behind cleaning pay, from the legal floor to what specialists and the self-employed actually make.
Cleaners in the UK must be paid at least £12.71 an hour from April 2026 if they are 21 or over, and most advertised cleaning jobs pay between that floor and about £14. Employers signed up to the voluntary real Living Wage pay £13.45 (£14.80 in London), specialist roles reach £16 or more, and self-employed cleaners typically charge £15 to £20 an hour.
A stocked cleaning cart in an empty glass-walled corridor at first light.
The legal floor: minimum wage rates
Cleaning is a minimum-wage-anchored sector, so the statutory rates set the baseline for almost every advert you will see. From 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over, a 4.1% rise on the previous £12.211. Workers aged 18 to 20 must get at least£10.85. These are legal minimums per hour worked, including trial shifts and training time.
Two practical points follow. First, an advert offering less than £12.71 to an adult is not a low offer, it is an illegal one, and worth reporting to HMRC. Second, because the floor rose faster than average wages in recent years, the gap between "minimum wage cleaning job" and the sector's typical rates has narrowed: the floor now does a lot of the lifting.
- Legal minimum, 21 and over
- £12.71/hour
- Legal minimum, 18 to 20
- £10.85/hour
- Real Living Wage, UK
- £13.45/hour
- Real Living Wage, London
- £14.80/hour
- Full-time year at the floor
- about £24,800
The real Living Wage difference
Separate from the legal minimum, the voluntary real Living Wage set by the Living Wage Foundation is£13.45 an hour UK-wide and £14.80 in London for 2025-262. Around 16,000 employers are accredited, and in cleaning the difference is visible in adverts: accredited facilities companies and public bodies name the rate. Over a full-time year the UK rate is worth roughly£1,400 more than the legal floor. If two adverts look identical, the Living Wage logo is the tiebreak.
Pay by type of cleaning work
Advertised rates cluster by niche. The table shows the ranges that dominate UK job boards in 2026; the live boards on this site are the fastest way to see today's numbers for your area.
| Type of work | Typical advertised range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Office and commercial | £12.71 to £13.50 | Part-time shifts, volume end of the market |
| Domestic (employed/agency) | £12.71 to £14 | Daytime hours, regular clients |
| School cleaning | £12.71 to £13.50 | Term-time contracts, enhanced DBS paid by employer |
| Hotel housekeeping | £12.71 to £13.50 | Per-room targets; tips and live-in vary the picture |
| End of tenancy | £13 to £15 equivalent | Often per-property; fast teams beat hourly work |
| Sparkle / builders cleans | £13 to £15 | Site conditions and deadlines push rates up |
| Hoarder and specialist | £13 to £16 | Training given; least competition per vacancy |
| Window cleaning (employed) | £13 to £15 | Round ownership changes the economics entirely |
| Supervisor / team leader | £14 to £16 | The standard first step up in any niche |
Pay by city
Region moves the numbers less than niche does, with one exception: London. The capital's floor is the same £12.71, but the voluntary London Living Wage of £14.80 is common enough on large contracts that typical office-cleaning adverts sit a pound or more above the national picture. In Scotland, Living Wage accreditation is widespread, so £13.45 appears in Glasgow adverts far more often than in English cities outside London. Our city boards for London, Manchester,Birmingham, Leeds,Glasgow and Liverpool show the live spread.
What that means as an annual salary
Cleaning is quoted hourly because part-time dominates, but the full-time arithmetic matters for comparing against salaried work. At 37.5 hours a week for 52 weeks:
| Hourly rate | Full-time annual equivalent |
|---|---|
| £12.71 (legal floor) | £24,785 |
| £13.45 (real Living Wage) | £26,228 |
| £14.80 (London Living Wage) | £28,860 |
| £16.00 (specialist/supervisor) | £31,200 |
Most cleaners work fewer than 37.5 hours on one contract, which is whystacking shifts is the sector's standard route to a full-time income.
The part-time reality: weekly money
Annual figures flatter a sector built on part-time contracts, so it helps to think in weeks. A single office contract of two hours a morning, five days a week, is 10 hours: at the £12.71 floor that is £127.10 a week before deductions. Add a matching evening shift at another building and the same ten days of travel produce £254.20. A school run alongside a term-time contract of 12.5 hours a week pays about £158.88 in term weeks, usually averaged across the year so the pay arrives in the holidays too.
Two things move the weekly number more than the hourly rate. The first is travel: three short shifts across town can pay less per hour of your day than two longer ones nearby, which is why experienced cleaners build their week inside one patch. The second is guaranteed hours. A contract that promises 20 hours beats one that advertises "up to 25", and it is worth asking atinterview which one is on the table. Weekly-paid agency work smooths cash flow but rarely carries the sick pay and pension contributions that come with an employed contract at a facilities company.
Self-employed rates
Self-employed domestic cleaners set their own prices, and the going range on quote platforms and local adverts is£15 to £20 an hour across most of the UK, with London commonly £15 to £25. The headline is not the take-home: from it come public liability insurance, products, travel between clients, cancellations and unpaid admin, and then Income Tax and National Insurance through Self Assessment3. A realistic planning assumption is that £18 charged resembles £13 to £14 employed once those costs are counted, with upside as the client list tightens into one area. The full picture, including insurance and HMRC registration, is in our self-employed cleaner guide.
How cleaners raise their pay
The reliable levers, in the order most people reach them: move niche (a domestic cleaner moving toend of tenancy teams or sparkle cleanstypically gains £1 to £2 an hour), take the keyholder or team-leader step (another £1 to £2), specialise (hoarder and biohazard work tops the employed scale), or goself-employed once you can fill a week. Supervisory experience compounds: area manager roles in facilities companies are salaried positions recruited almost entirely from working cleaners.
Questions people ask
What is the minimum wage for cleaners in 2026?
From 1 April 2026 the National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for workers aged 21 and over, and £10.85 for 18 to 20 year olds. Every employed cleaning job in the UK must pay at least these rates, whatever the advert says.
How much do self-employed cleaners charge per hour?
Typical advertised rates for self-employed domestic cleaners run from about £15 to £20 an hour across most of the UK, and £15 to £25 in London. That is charge-out, not take-home: insurance, travel, products and unpaid admin come out of it before tax.
Which cleaning jobs pay the most?
Specialist work pays best: hoarder and trauma cleaning, industrial cleaning, and supervisory roles all sit above general rates, with adverts commonly in the £13 to £16 an hour range. High-level window cleaning with rope access tickets is a different trade again and pays more.
Is cleaning paid weekly or monthly?
Both exist. Large facilities companies mostly pay monthly, agencies often weekly, and self-employed cleaners invoice on whatever cycle they agree with clients. The advert or contract states it; ask at interview if it matters for your budgeting.
- GOV.UK, "National Living Wage increases to £12.71 per hour", gov.uk/government/news/national-living-wage-increases-to-1271-per-hour. Accessed 17 July 2026.
- Living Wage Foundation, "Calculating the real Living Wage for London and the rest of the UK: 2025", livingwage.org.uk. Accessed 17 July 2026.
- GOV.UK, "Self Assessment tax returns", gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns. Accessed 17 July 2026.
- GOV.UK, "The National Minimum Wage in 2026", Low Pay Commission uprating report, assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. Accessed 17 July 2026.
Last reviewed 17 July 2026. Rates checked against the sources above; the statutory rates change every April.