Construction dust gets everywhere you would not expect. This is the order we work in so it does not settle twice.
A construction clean takes 3 passes, not 1, because fine drywall dust stays airborne for 2 to 3 days and settles again after every clean. A single-pass post-construction clean looks perfect for about four hours, and then the first person to walk through finds a film on every horizontal surface.
Why three passes?
Drywall dust is not dirt. It is a powder fine enough to stay suspended long after the sanding stops, and it comes back down on whatever was just wiped. The only way through it is to clean, wait for the air to clear, and clean again.
- Rough clean — once the trades are out and the debris is gone. 4 to 6 hours on a typical 2,000 square foot job.
- Detail clean — at least 48 hours later, once the dust has finished falling. 6 to 8 hours with a 2-person crew, and this is the pass that does the real work.
- Final touch-up — 1 to 2 hours immediately before handover or photography.
What does it cover that a regular clean does not?
The surfaces are the same. The problems on them are not.
- Adhesive residue, paint spots and label glue on glass, hardware and appliances
- Inside every cabinet and drawer, where dust settled before the doors were hung
- Vents, returns and the top edge of every trim run and door frame
- Grout haze and the manufacturing film on new tile and stone
- Window tracks and sills, which hold construction grit longer than any other surface in the building
- Light fixtures and fan blades, which are almost always installed dusty and then never touched
When should it be scheduled around the paint?
After the cure, never into it. Paint that is dry to touch is not cured — it keeps hardening for days — and cleaning solvent on a fresh coat leaves marks that show under raking light. When one company handles both the interior painting and the clean, that timing is planned rather than discovered.
The most common way a good paint job gets damaged is a cleaner arriving 48 hours too early.
Who books this?
General contractors at handover, homeowners at the end of a remodel, and property managers turning a renovated unit back to rentable. If you need it as part of a package with the finishing trades, see post-construction cleaning and subcontract work for general contractors.
Tell us the handover date and we will work the three passes backwards from it.
