How often should you clean your windows? The honest answer
Four-weekly suits most Teesside homes and is essential for coastal and main-road properties; eight-weekly works for sheltered closes inland. Anything longer than eight weeks and you are not maintaining clean windows, you are repeatedly rescuing dirty ones.
The two honest options
Four-weekly keeps glass genuinely clean: grime never gets the chance to bond, frames stay bright, and each visit is quick maintenance. Eight-weekly halves the annual cost and works for sheltered closes and less exposed properties, but each visit does more recovery work. Beyond eight weeks the maths collapses: a quarterly visit costs more per clean and the glass spends half its life dirty. You are not saving money, you are just looking through dirt for longer.
When four-weekly is non-negotiable
- Coastal properties: Redcar, Saltburn, Hartlepool's Headland. Salt film dulls glass within days and pits frames if left.
- Main-road frontages: the A19 and A66 corridors and central Middlesbrough throw traffic film that greys frames fast.
- North-facing and shaded glass: stays damp, grows algae film on frames and seals.
- Gull flight paths: a Teesside coastal constant. Seagull mess is acidic and etches glass if it sits.
When eight-weekly is genuinely fine
Sheltered closes on the modern estates, Ingleby Barwick, parts of Billingham, the Pavilion side of Thornaby, where the house sits back from main roads with no tree overhang and no sea in the wind. The test is simple: if your windows still look respectable at week six, eight-weekly is your frequency. If they do not, it is not.
The cost comparison, honestly
A 3-bed semi at £15 per clean: four-weekly costs £195 a year, eight-weekly costs £98 a year plus the modest per-visit premium some cleaners charge for the longer gap. The question is not which is cheaper but what you want to look through. Most households that try eight-weekly on an exposed property are back on four-weekly within two visits.