A 3-hour weekly visit from one of our domestic cleaners in Lewisham comes to £69. Fortnightly visits are £24 an hour, and your household keeps the products and equipment the cleaner uses.
Houses matter in Lewisham. Terraces account for 26.2% of its 122,393 households and semis for 13.0%, while 57.7% live in flats, and the Valuation Office Agency puts a little over a third of the homes before 1919. A terraced house brings a staircase to vacuum and floors on two or three levels, so four hours a week is a sensible start for a family in one. A one-bedroom flat fits into the 3-hour minimum. On the trial visit, show the cleaner which rooms come first and which to leave alone.
Hard water and limescale in Lewisham homes
Thames Water says every home it supplies gets hard water: roughly two thirds of it is taken from rivers and the rest from underground sources, and it all runs through chalky limestone. Some of Lewisham is harder again. Some of the postcodes sampled in Brockley, Ladywell and central Lewisham fall in the company’s Lewisham North zone, with a 2025 mean of 308 mg/l of calcium carbonate, and its New Cross zone came out at 331. Thames Water’s own scale calls anything past 300 very hard. The Lewisham South, Norwood and Forest Hill and Sydenham East zones averaged nearer 250. Where the water is that hard, scale gathers fast on taps, shower screens and the kettle, so part of every bathroom clean goes on it. Leave a limescale remover and a soft cloth for the chrome with the rest of your products. Scale left for years comes off faster with a deep clean before the weekly visits start, at £28 per cleaner hour plus £30 for the team’s own kit.
Parking for a cleaner in Lewisham
Controlled zones in Lewisham keep their own hours. Blackheath (BHA) and Lewisham Central (B1) are enforced Monday to Saturday from 9am until 7pm, the Deptford zones on weekdays until 5pm, and Lee Green and Ladywell West for just two hours on weekday mornings; signs at each zone entry give the detail. Lewisham lets a resident buy visitor permits for resident bays and send one electronically to someone coming to work at the home, who enters the car’s registration themselves. A resident can choose to send one to a cleaner who drives. Without a voucher, whatever the bay costs is added at cost, never more than £40. A cleaner coming by train, bus or on foot needs only a way in: once the trial visit is done, a spare key handed to the cleaner means nobody has to stay home, and the office never keeps keys.
Lodgers, sharers and moving out in Lewisham
About 20,000 Lewisham homes fall under selective licensing, in force from 1 July 2024. It reaches almost every privately let home that HMO rules do not already cover, with two gaps: Telegraph Hill and some Blackheath streets. The council’s additional HMO scheme, running from April 2022, applies to three or four unrelated people sharing a kitchen or bathroom, to three or more sharing a flat in a purpose-built block, and to a landlord living with more than two lodgers. Private tenants make up 27.2% of households. In a shared home the weekly hours go furthest on the rooms everyone uses, and one sharer books and pays, on the day or by monthly invoice, with the others settling up with that person. When the lease ends, the move-out team brings its own equipment and products and charges by the number of bedrooms: an end of tenancy clean runs from £156 for a studio to £339 for three bedrooms.
Domestic cleaning in Blackheath
In 1968 Lewisham and Greenwich made Blackheath London’s first conservation area between them. The houses stand in pairs or formal terraces, and the bulk of the buildings date from roughly 1790 to 1880; on certain streets an Article 4 direction stops owners stripping out period features. Those features take longer to dust than the plain walls of a new flat, and a whole house of that age usually needs four or five hours a visit. Check which council you are under. SE3 is split with Greenwich, so the street decides who sets your parking, licensing and bin rules. On the Lewisham side the BHA zone stays controlled on Saturdays, where plenty of Lewisham zones are weekday-only, which matters for a Saturday visit if the domestic cleaner drives. The three Blackheath ward postcodes Thames Water checked came back in its Blackheath zone, with a 2025 mean of 282 mg/l, hard enough that the shower glass and the kitchen taps need attention every week.
Domestic cleaning in Brockley
Brockley’s conservation area was built by speculators: building began in the 1830s, most houses date from the second half of the 19th century, and the southern streets from the 1900s. Tiled front paths, terracotta details and spacious front gardens mark the area, and an Article 4 direction applies. The practical side for domestic cleaning is grit: a front garden and a tiled path send it into the hall, so the hall floor and the mat get done on every visit. Brockley rents more than the borough as a whole, 36.0% of households privately, and 71.3% of households live in flats. A two-bedroom flat in a converted house usually takes 3 hours weekly. The two Brockley postcodes Thames Water checked landed in its Lewisham North zone, which averaged 308 mg/l in 2025, very hard on its scale, so stock a descaler for the bath and basin. For landlords, the pre-2022 Brockley ward is listed in the selective licensing designation, which runs to July 2029.
Domestic cleaning in Catford
Catford mixes a 1970s complex with an Edwardian suburb. Milford Towers, built in 1974 as one complex with the shopping centre and a car park on Holbeach Road, has 276 homes in eight blocks, and the council has been working on door entry, lifts, roofs and water mains. On a block like that, tell the office how the cleaner gets through the entry door, and say whether the lift is working. Culverley Green is a different kind of Catford: a grid of wide Edwardian streets, plus late Victorian villas on Canadian Avenue, where houses keep their stained glass, timber doors and sashes; a family house there suits a weekly four-hour visit. The council’s town centre plan allows for up to 2,700 new homes over the next two decades. Catford’s town centre zones are enforced weekdays from 9am until 7pm. Water differs within the area: Thames Water put one Rushey Green postcode (SE6 2BB) in a zone averaging 248 mg/l, and the three it checked in Catford South and Bellingham in its Bellingham and Mottingham zone, mean 292. For domestic cleaners that means more descaler where the readings are higher.
Domestic cleaning in Deptford
Three days a week Deptford High Street turns into a market. On Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays stalls fill the High Street and Douglas Way until 5.30pm, and no traffic is allowed on the High Street between 6am and 7pm on those days, so for a flat above the shops a team that drives is better booked on another day. The flats over the shops sit in a conservation area, named for the High Street and St Paul’s Church, that grew up around Henry VIII’s naval dockyard and keeps many 18th century buildings. Most Deptford households live in flats (82.9%), including the Pepys Estate, opened in July 1966 on the old Victualling Yard, and the 1930s Crossfield Estate, nine blocks inside the Deptford Creekside conservation area. A flat of one or two bedrooms is a 3-hour job for weekly domestic cleaning. Two Deptford ward postcodes came back in Thames Water’s New Cross zone, mean 331 mg/l in 2025 and the hardest zone average in the borough’s sampled figures, so leave out a limescale remover.
Domestic cleaning in Forest Hill
Forest Hill’s railway arrived in 1839, and the residential streets of its conservation area went up mainly between 1840 and 1900. Its conservation area covers 45 hectares, the fifth biggest in Lewisham, taking in the Horniman gardens, the listed buildings of the old municipal centre on Dartmouth Road and interwar houses on Thorpewood Avenue, with an Article 4 direction over architectural features. Nearly half of households own their home (49.1%), and a Victorian house with three bedrooms usually needs four hours a week. Add ironing as extra time on the same visit, priced on the call, or book it separately. No controlled zone carries Forest Hill’s name on Lewisham’s list; Honor Oak and Ravensbourne Park, the zones close by, apply on weekdays between 9am and 5pm. The two Forest Hill ward postcodes Thames Water checked sit in its Norwood and Forest Hill zone, mean 255 mg/l, among the softer readings in the borough, so limescale is slower to return between domestic cleaning visits there.
Domestic cleaning in Lewisham
New flats are going up around Lewisham’s stations. Right beside them, the first phase of Lewisham Gateway is complete, 362 private homes set round Confluence Place, a new park. Its second phase is listed as under construction: 649 homes, most for market rent, with 119 co-living studios among them. A one-bedroom flat in a new block like those is a 3-hour weekly visit. Older housing sits close by. Ladywell’s conservation area is mostly generous late Victorian houses from the 1880s and 1890s by the builder Samuel J. Jerrard, on streets such as Vicars Hill, Algernon Road and Algiers Road, and a family kitchen in a house that size is a good candidate for an oven clean, from £77 for a single oven. Parking varies: zone B1 runs Monday to Saturday from 9am to 7pm, and B2 adds Sundays from 9am to 1.30pm, while Ladywell West has a two-hour weekday window that ends at noon. Ask the office about domestic cleaners for your exact SE13 postcode.
Domestic cleaning in New Cross
At Telegraph Hill and Hatcham the land belonged to the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, which set the rules for what was built. On Telegraph Hill, named after a semaphore station of 1795, houses went up from 1871 to the company’s strict guidelines for a middle-class estate, and an Article 4 direction still protects their features. In the Hatcham conservation area terraced houses stand behind New Cross Road, where many front gardens later had shops built on them. Telegraph Hill ward is outside selective licensing, which leaves a let to one household there free of that licence, though HMO rules still apply. Water hardness changes within New Cross: the two New Cross Gate postcodes Thames Water checked sit in its New Cross zone, mean 331 mg/l and very hard, while the two from Telegraph Hill are in Sydenham East, mean 254. Fortnightly cleaning, at £24 an hour, works for a smaller New Cross flat, with the bathroom scale tackled on each visit.
Domestic cleaning in Sydenham
Sydenham’s Thorpes Estate is six roads of Edwardian houses laid out from 1901 to 1914 by Edmondson and Sons: red brick with white roughcast, grey slate roofs and sash windows with many small panes. Inside, those panes and their sills collect dust, and cleaning a whole Thorpes house takes four hours a week or longer. Peak Hill Gardens has tall Victorian terraces within the Cobb’s Corner conservation area, and on Jews Walk stand semi-detached Gothic Revival villas with steep slate roofs and mullioned casement windows. Tall houses mean stairs, so plan the visit from the top floor down. A sofa that has taken years of family life is outside a weekly clean, and an upholstery clean costs £57 for a two-seater, on a visit of at least £67. Sampled Sydenham postcodes fall in two Thames Water zones, both averaging about 254 mg/l in 2025, hard by Thames Water’s measure yet below 300. Where readings sit that low, domestic cleaners spend less time on scale than in the zones above 300.
Questions about domestic cleaning in Lewisham
Can I send a Lewisham visitor e-voucher to my cleaner?
Yes. Lewisham’s visitor permits for resident bays can go to a tradesperson as an e-voucher, and the person receiving it fills in their own car’s details. If the cleaner who comes to you drives and you prefer not to use a voucher, you pay what the street parking costs, and never more than £40.
Is my Blackheath address in Lewisham or Greenwich?
It depends on the street. The SE3 postcode district is split between the two boroughs, and the council for your street sets the parking, licensing and bin rules. Domestic cleaning is booked the same way on either side.
How hard is the water in Lewisham?
All of it is hard on Thames Water’s scale. Zone averages for 2025 at the sampled Lewisham postcodes go from 248 mg/l of calcium carbonate in its Lewisham South zone to 331 in its New Cross zone, which counts as very hard. A limescale remover belongs with the products you leave out for a regular cleaner.
Can I get a regular cleaner anywhere in Lewisham?
Not in every postcode. Lewisham runs from SE3 down to SE26, and a regular cleaner may not be free in each part of it, so the office confirms yours on the call. Where one is free, you pay £26 an hour for the trial first visit, and the office tries to keep the same cleaner on your day. The domestic cleaners page lists what a visit covers.