Last updated: September 2026
Move-out carpet cleaning and your deposit
A move-out clean has one job on paper: showing that the carpet was cleaned by a company, on a date anyone can check. The work is low-moisture, the floor is dry in about an hour, and the itemized receipt reaches you the same day. It cannot promise your deposit back.
- Read the carpet clause before you book. It sometimes says you owe nothing, and it sometimes says you already paid.
- A receipt a leasing office accepts names the company, the address and unit, the date, and each room and treatment on its own line.
- Clean it after the furniture leaves and within a few days of the walk-through. An old date invites a question you cannot answer.
- Soil comes out. Thinness does not. Nobody can promise you a deposit, and this page will not.
What the carpet clause is really asking for
Carpet turns up in a residential lease in one of three shapes, and they ask completely different things of you.
The softest version says the unit comes back in the condition you got it, normal wear excepted. That is a standard, not an errand. Nothing in it says you have to hire anybody.
The second version is explicit: the carpet must be professionally cleaned at the end of the term, and a receipt has to be produced. This is the one that catches people out. A tenant who borrowed a machine and did a good job has done the work and still cannot answer the clause.
The third version is a flat carpet fee written into the lease and taken at the end whether you clean or not. If that is your clause, hiring a cleaner on top of it is paying for the same floor twice. Read it before you call anyone, us included.
We clean carpet. We do not give legal advice, and we will never tell you a clean floor gets your money back. A deposit is judged on the whole apartment, and the floor is one line of several. What cleaning does is take that line off the sheet and put a document in its place.
What has to be on the receipt
A property manager is not reading your receipt for craft. They are checking that a company did the work, at that address, on a date that makes sense. Six things carry it.
- The company name and a street address. Ours prints both at the top of the receipt. A phone number on its own is not an address.
- The address cleaned, unit number included. Apt 4 and Apt 4B are two different files on somebody's desk.
- The date the work happened. Not the date it was booked, and not the date the card was charged.
- A line for each room, each staircase and each treatment. "Three rooms" on one line tells a manager nothing about the bedroom they are standing in.
- The amount and how it was paid.
- A number somebody answers. Ours is 423-284-0493, six days a week, closed Sunday. Managers do ring it.
Ask for it by email or text, so it is timestamped somewhere other than your kitchen counter. If it goes missing mid-move, ask us for another copy.
Timing it around the walk-through
Pin the inspection date first
Everything hangs off it, and it is the only date on the page you do not control.
Movers out, then us
Put us in after the truck leaves. On a bare floor nothing is hidden, and nothing gets walked over again once it is done.
Keep the receipt date close
A few days ahead is right. Paper dated three weeks before the inspection raises the obvious question of who has been walking on it since.
Out of runway? Take a morning
An hour of drying means an early start survives an afternoon inspection. Booked first thing, the rooms are dry hours before anyone with a clipboard arrives.
Whose half is whose, and where cleaning stops
Two different things get called dirty carpet at a walk-through, and only one of them is yours. Soil is the tenant's half, and soil comes out: the lane from the front door, the ring left by a rug that sat two winters, the gray line where the carpet meets the wall. Wear is the owner's half, and no cleaning sells youth back.
That line lands in an awkward spot around here, because our dirt does two jobs at once. The dirt that comes in on shoes is loaded with grit. It does not only stain a walkway, it files it down. So a lane in a rental around Chattanooga often reads thin as well as dark, and we take a long dry pass at the grit before any moisture goes near it. The dirt and grit guide takes that apart properly.
The practical upshot at an inspection: soil lifts out and thinness does not. A pale walkway in a carpet that has just been cleaned is age rather than soil, and the move-in photos you were told to take are what that conversation runs on.
Three things cleaning does not fix, and you should hear it now: bleach marks where the color is gone for good, burns, and snags. Those read as damage on any inspection sheet.
What a move-out visit takes in
An empty unit takes less time than a furnished one, because nothing has to be lifted, shuffled or worked around. A one or two-bedroom turn usually sits inside the three-room starting price.
| Move-out line | Starting at |
|---|---|
| Three rooms, up to 450 square feet of carpet | from $109 |
| Extra room, standard size | typically $40 to $50 |
| Extra room, den or bonus size | typically $50 to $100 |
| Hallway, any length | typically $20 to $30 |
| Stairs, one flight | typically $40 to $50 |
| Pet treatment, one room (pet jobs typically start around $149) | typically $30 to $40 |
| Area rug left behind, any fiber, by the square foot | from $1 |
Every visit starts at $99. Our cost guide works through the add-ons, and the move-out service page covers multi-unit turns.
If an animal lived there, the pet treatment is the line worth adding. Dried urine leaves a salt that an ordinary clean walks straight past, so the treatment breaks it down where it sits, and a 100% pet odor removal guarantee stands behind it.
Rentals here, and the state line running through them
Chattanooga proper is where a lot of this job lives, and the towns around it carry the rest. An empty unit is the plainest floor we clean and the one where the work shows most, because there is no furniture to hide a missed lane behind. Our technician walks it first, reads the fiber, and prices every room and treatment on paper before the equipment comes in, so the receipt matches the quote line for line and nothing turns up on the sheet that was not agreed at the door.
The clean itself is low-moisture. The solution goes on, it is worked into the pile, and the soil comes back out with it. Nothing is left in the pile to pull the next month of soil in, so the clean lasts about three times longer. The floor is back in use about an hour later, so a walk-through the same afternoon is fine. The technician is our own employee, so the name on the receipt is the name on the shirt at the door.
Then there is the state line, which runs straight through this market. A lease signed in Fort Oglethorpe or Ringgold is a Georgia document and one signed in Hixson is a Tennessee document, and they do not have to say the same thing about carpet. Our price sheet does not change at the line. The lease does, so read the one you actually signed.
Tell us when the inspection is and we will build the schedule around it. Call 423-284-0493 with the address, the unit and the deadline, or pick a time online. Our Google rating sits at 4.9 from 510 reviews, and the guarantee is the plain one: love the clean or it's free. Texting works too: 423-284-0493.
Questions about move-out cleaning and deposits
What does a lease usually mean when it says professionally cleaned?
It means a cleaning company did the work and can prove it on paper. Some leases stop there. Others name how soon the receipt has to be handed in after the keys go back. Read the exact wording before you book anything, because the clause decides what the paperwork has to prove, and that is a different question from what the job costs.
What has to be on the paperwork before a leasing office will take it?
Six things: the cleaning company name and a street address, the address and unit that was worked on, the date the work happened, a separate line for every room and every treatment, the amount paid, and a phone number somebody answers. Ours carries all six and goes out by text or email the same day. Keep it with the photos you took on the way out.
Will a rented machine satisfy a move-out cleaning clause?
Sometimes, if the clause only asks for the carpet to be clean. If it asks for a professional service or a receipt, a rental slip from a grocery store does not answer it, because there is no company name, no itemized work and no number for the leasing office to ring. A three-room clean starts at $109 and the document comes with it.
Who pays for a traffic lane that is worn instead of dirty?
Wear belongs to whoever owns the building and soil belongs to whoever put it there. The test is what the lane looks like once it is clean. Dark lifts out. Thin does not, because thin is fiber that has been ground down over years, and no cleaning brings that back. Your move-in photos are what settle the rest.
I have already handed the keys back. Can it still be cleaned?
Yes, as long as somebody can let us in. Landlords and property managers book empty units with us all the time, and when the outgoing tenant is the one paying we send the receipt to both parties. Call 423-284-0493 with the address, the unit number and the name on the lease and we will sort the access out.
The landlord had the carpet cleaned and took it out of my deposit. What now?
Ask for the vendor invoice, itemized, and read it against what your lease actually allows. We will not tell you how that conversation ends, because the deposit is judged on the whole unit and the decision is the landlord's. What we can tell you is that a tenant who booked the clean, paid around $109 and holds a dated receipt has something to put on the table.
Back on your floor before lunch is over.
Low-moisture deep clean, dry in about an hour · Love the clean or it's free.