Window Cleaning Pricing Guide: What a Per-Pane Rate Hides

Short answer: A window cleaning pricing guide has to price two things the pane count never shows: the access class and the storm windows. One pane unit is one piece of glass, one side. The same 34 pieces of glass — 68 pane units in and out — run 3.3 on-site hours on a ground-level ranch and 6.6 hours on a two-story house with triple-track storms and hard-water scale. At a $46 loaded hour that is roughly $260 against $532.

The pane is a good unit. It is countable, it is checkable, and two crews can agree on it if the counting rules are written down. What it does not carry is how you reach the glass, what has to come off before you can wash it, and what is bonded to the surface. Those three things routinely double the job without changing the count by one. Below is what the unit contains, what breaks it, and one house priced under two sets of conditions.

What does one pane unit actually buy?

One piece of glass, one side, cleaned edge to edge, with the frame wiped and the sill or track detailed to whatever your written scope says. The trouble starts with the word “window.” A customer standing in the driveway counts openings. You count glass faces. A house with 34 pieces of glass quoted inside and out is 68 pane units, and a customer who counted 17 windows will read your invoice as double-billing unless the header explains the count.

Three units are in circulation and each is right for something different.

Unit	Fits	Falls apart on
Pane unit	Residential, mixed glass, first-time quotes	Anything past ladder and pole reach
Per front, per visit	Weekly and biweekly storefront routes	Interiors, atriums, anything with a second floor
Per hour	Restoration and post-construction only	Recurring work, where it hands every efficiency gain to the customer

Hourly is the correct unit exactly once: when nobody can predict the minutes. That is restoration glass and post-construction. Everywhere else it caps you at the speed of your worst day.

Which openings are worth more than one pane?

Write these rules down and put them on the estimate, because a count nobody can reproduce is a count you will argue about.

Opening	Pane units per side	Why
Double-hung or single-hung	2	Two sashes, and the upper is the one that gets skipped
Slider, two panels	2
Casement or awning	1
Fixed picture window	1 up to roughly 12 sq ft, 2 above	Squeegee length and weight, not area alone
True divided lite, 6 over 6	12	Detailed by hand. Grids sealed between the glass count as 1
French door	Count the lites
Transom and sidelight	1 each	Small, numerous, almost always forgotten in a phone quote
Triple-track storm over a prime	2, plus a removal and reinstall	Both faces of the storm panel, then the prime behind it
Skylight	1, priced at the roof’s access class	The glass is trivial. Getting to it is not

Interior gets its own count. It is never half the exterior, because furniture moves, blinds come down, shoes come off, and somebody is home.

Why does the access class move the price more than the glass count?

Because the pane rate is really a rate per pane at a given reach, and reach changes the method, the equipment, and the risk class at the same time.

Class	Method	What it changes
Reachable standing	Squeegee, short pole	The base rate
Second story, firm level ground	24 to 28 ft extension ladder	A set, a level check and a move per opening — the ladder, not the glass, sets the pace
Second story with a deck, slope, sunroom or planting bed underneath	Water-fed pole, deionized water	No ladder moves, slower per pane, resin cost per gallon, and no hand-detailing of the frame
Above ladder and pole reach	Boom lift or rope descent	A different business with a different insurance conversation

That last row has a gate on it that most residential cleaners never see. Under OSHA’s rope descent system rule, the building owner must inform you in writing that each anchorage has been identified, tested, certified and maintained to hold at least 5,000 pounds in any direction for every worker attached, based on an annual inspection by a qualified person and certification at least every ten years. No letter, no rope. Chasing that letter is billable bid time on commercial high work, and it belongs in the price rather than in your evening.

What do screens, tracks and storm windows add?

Three separate operations that the glass count is completely blind to.

Screens are their own unit. Pull, wash, dry, reinstall, and label them so they return to the opening they came from. Twenty screens is twenty removals plus twenty reinstalls, and old aluminum frames and brittle spline break in your hands. Put the policy on the estimate before you touch the first one: what you will repair, what you will replace at cost, and what you will simply refuse to pull.

Tracks and sills are dry work before wet work. A track that has been vacuumed monthly is a wipe. A track holding ten years of grit, dead insects and paint chips is a brush, a vacuum and a detail pass, and it is what customers inspect first.

Storm windows are the expensive surprise, and they are almost never mentioned on the phone. Each triple-track adds two glass faces to wash, the prime window’s exterior behind it, an integral screen, and a removal and reinstall on a track that may not have moved in a decade. Fourteen storms on a house is roughly a hundred minutes that does not exist anywhere in the pane count. Count them at the walk-through and price them as their own line.

When is the glass a restoration job, not a cleaning?

When something is bonded to the surface rather than sitting on it: hard-water mineral scale, construction overspray, stucco or mortar splatter, paint specks, or oxidation running off an aluminum frame.

That work is abrasive or acidic, it carries a real risk of scratching tempered glass, and on etched panes the result may be improvement rather than removal. Price it separately after a test panel, per pane at a restoration rate, and write the expected outcome into the estimate in one sentence: improvement expected, complete removal not guaranteed on etched glass. Post-construction cleanup belongs in the same category and should never touch your recurring rate card. Getting that scope in writing before the work is also the cheapest collection tool you have, which is most of how to get clients to pay.

What does the same 34-window house cost in two conditions?

Both houses have 34 pieces of glass, quoted inside and out, which is 68 pane units.

House A — single-story ranch. All glass reachable standing or from a step ladder, 15 screens, no storms, house empty on cleaning day, soft water.

House B — two-story. Twelve pieces of glass on the second floor over a deck and a planting bed, so a water-fed pole rather than a ladder. Fourteen triple-track aluminum storms with integral screens, eight screens elsewhere, grit-packed tracks, hard-water scale on two south-facing sliders, homeowner and two dogs at home.

Task	House A (min)	House B (min)
Setup — ladder, pole system, DI tank	12	30
Exterior, ground reach	48	31
Exterior, second story by water-fed pole	—	38
Storms: pull, wash both faces, wash the prime, reinstall	—	98
Interior, all glass	61	82
Screens	38	21
Tracks and sills	27	37
Hard-water pre-treatment, two sliders	—	40
Teardown, walk-through, ticket	10	18
On-site minutes	196	395
On-site hours	3.3	6.6

Now the money at a loaded hour of $46 — wage plus payroll burden, van, insurance, equipment, water treatment and overhead. That figure is a placeholder. Build yours from your own year.

	House A	House B
On-site labor	3.3 × $46 = $151.80	6.6 × $46 = $303.60
Drive from the previous stop	0.25 hr = $11.50	0.40 hr = $18.40
Consumables, resin, laundering	$6.00	$24.00
Total cost	$169.30	$346.00
Price at a 35% margin	169.30 ÷ 0.65 = $260	346.00 ÷ 0.65 = $532
Implied price per pane unit	$3.82	$7.82

Identical glass counts, exactly twice the clock. Even if you re-count House B to include the 28 storm faces, giving 96 pane units, the implied rate is $5.54 — still 45 percent above House A. There is no per-pane number that covers both houses, which is the whole case against quoting one over the phone.

Do the margin line slowly, because this is where the trade leaks money. Adding 35 percent markup to House B’s $346 gives $467, which is a 25.9 percent margin, $65 short on one house. Markup is added to cost. Margin is taken out of price. Divide by one minus the margin.

How small is too small without a minimum?

Every stop carries a fixed block of clock that touches no glass: the drive both directions, the ladder off the rack and back on, setup, teardown and the ticket. Call it 45 minutes, which at $46 is about $35 before a squeegee moves. A six-pane storm door and transom job at House A’s $3.82 rate bills $23 and loses money on arrival.

So publish a minimum that covers the fixed clock plus your margin, and quote it as a minimum rather than as a rate. On route commercial work the same logic runs backward: a storefront on a weekly route shares its drive with four neighbors, so per-visit pricing genuinely can be lower without touching your margin.

What is a published per-pane price worth?

As a sanity check, something. As a price, nothing, because you cannot see what the published number includes. Two companies quoting the same house at the same headline rate may be selling different jobs: one counts sashes and the other counts openings, one includes screens and tracks and the other charges both as extras, one pulls the storms and the other cleans around them.

If your calculated number lands at half or double what comparable local companies charge, recheck your timed minutes, your loaded hourly figure and your access classification before you move your price to theirs.

What has to be recorded for the unit to stay honest?

Three things per address: the pane count with the counting rules you used, the screen and storm count with photos of anything already damaged, and the actual on-site minutes. A house that runs 40 minutes over every visit is not a scheduling problem. It is a price set once and never revisited.

Keel is an iOS app that holds the money half of that on the phone, with no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. The counting and the quote stay on your clipboard, but the invoice goes out from the driveway in about a minute with your own numbering, your logo, your brand color, and a payment link the customer scans as a QR code off your screen, which matters in a trade where the customer is standing right there and gone by Tuesday. The example that walks a finished ticket line by line is window cleaning invoice example. Photograph the receipts for DI resin, squeegee rubber and scale remover at the register and Apple Intelligence reads them on the device, so the consumables row in the table above stops being a guess — those are also the write-offs in self-employed tax deductions. A route of six houses logs six drives instead of one forgotten deduction; the mechanics are in independent contractor mileage log. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How do window cleaners charge — per pane or per hour?

Per pane unit for residential and first-time work, per visit for storefront routes, and per hour only for restoration and post-construction where the minutes are genuinely unpredictable. One pane unit is one piece of glass, one side. Hourly billing on recurring work hands every efficiency gain to the customer and quietly caps what the business can earn.

Does a double-hung window count as one pane or two?

Two, per side, because it holds two sashes and each is squeegeed separately. Quoted inside and out, one double-hung is four pane units. True divided lites are counted lite by lite; grids sealed between the panes count as a single piece of glass. Put the rule on the estimate so your count and the customer’s count match.

How much extra should I charge for storm windows?

Enough to cover the removal, both faces of the storm panel, the prime window behind it and the reinstall — commonly around seven minutes per storm on old aluminum track. Fourteen storms is roughly a hundred minutes that the pane count does not show. Count them during the walk-through and price them on their own line, never over the phone.

Why do window cleaners have a minimum charge?

Because every stop costs the same 45 minutes of drive, ladder handling, setup, teardown and paperwork whether the job is six panes or sixty. At a $46 loaded hour that is about $35 spent before any glass is touched. A minimum priced to cover the fixed clock plus margin keeps small jobs from being subsidized by the rest of the route.

Can I remove hard water spots as part of a normal cleaning?

No. Mineral scale is bonded to the glass and needs an acidic or abrasive process with a real risk of scratching, and etched panes may improve rather than clear completely. Test one pane, price it separately per pane, and state the expected outcome in writing. Folding restoration into a cleaning rate is how a house becomes the one nobody wants to return to.

How do I price second-story windows I cannot reach with a ladder?

By changing the access class, not by adding a small surcharge. A deck, a slope or a planting bed under the wall means a water-fed pole and deionized water, which is slower per pane, carries a resin cost and gives up hand-detailing of the frames. Anything above pole reach moves to a lift or rope descent, which is a separate line of work with its own equipment and documentation.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.