Inside or outside: which side of your windows actually needs cleaning?

Stand inside on a sunny afternoon and look at your living room window. The haze you see is almost all on the outside. Pollen from May, road grit from the winter, the dried rain spots from every storm since you last had it done. The inside, in most houses, has a few fingerprints and a dog nose print at knee height.

So here is the short answer. Most homes need the outside cleaned at least once a year and the inside about every second time. If you are only paying for one side, pay for the outside.

There are exceptions, and they are below. But that is the rule we would give a friend.

Why the outside gets so much worse

The outside of the glass lives in the weather. The inside lives in your house.

• Rain does not clean it. Rain picks up dust on the way down and off the frame above, then dries on the glass and leaves the dust behind. A window that has been rained on for a year is dirtier, not cleaner.
• Pollen sticks. In late May the yellow film lands on every outside pane in the county. On its own it rinses off. Mixed with a spring shower, it bakes on. We wrote about that in the pollen post.
• Salt and grit from the road. Houses near a busy road, like the ones backing onto Bayfield Street or Mapleview in Barrie, get a fine grey film every winter from the plows and the traffic.
• Sand and spray near water. Wasaga Beach windows get sand. Homes on Kempenfelt Bay or Lake Couchiching get lake spray, and lake spray leaves mineral spots.
• Bugs and webs. Spiders love the top corner of an outside frame. Ground-floor glass near a porch light in July is a mess.

The inside gets cooking steam, kids' hands and pets. That is real, but it is a short list, and it is mostly on a few windows rather than all of them.

When outside only is the right call

Book the exterior on its own when:

• You can see the dirt from inside and it does not wipe off from inside. That is the test. Put your hand on the glass from the inside and look. If the haze is behind your hand, it is on the outside.
• The house has no smokers and no fireplace that smokes back into the room.
• Nobody has cleaned the outside in a year or more. Upper-floor outside glass in a two-storey in Painswick or Holly often has not been touched in years, because nobody wants to carry a ladder around back.

For a lot of our customers that is the spring visit, after the road salt and the pollen are done. It is also a good fall visit, after the leaves are down and before the glass is too cold to work wet. Once it freezes, water on outside glass freezes too, so the outside season ends when the cold settles in.

When you want both sides

Pay for the inside as well when:

• You are selling or listing. Listing photos are taken from inside looking out. A clean outside with a smudged inside still photographs badly.
• There is a smoker, a wood stove or a fireplace. Smoke leaves a yellow film on the inside that is much harder to move than anything on the outside.
• The kitchen window over the sink. Cooking grease lands on the inside of the closest window. It is usually one window, but it is the one you look through most.
• Kids and dogs. Patio doors and low windows get it from the inside. Often that is a door and two windows, not the whole house.
• It has been two years or more. Inside glass slowly builds a film you stop noticing. You notice it the day it is gone.

If it is one or two inside windows, you can do those yourself in ten minutes. The full method, squeegee and all, is in what professionals use to clean windows without streaks. Tracks, screens and sills are in the order that works for tracks, screens and frames.

What each one costs

These are the numbers on our window cleaning page, so you can check them there:

• A bungalow, inside and out, is about $300. Outside only is usually $150 to $200.
• A standard two-storey, inside and out, is about $400.
• Exterior-only runs about 60 to 70 percent of the full price, because the outside is most of the work.

The longer breakdown, with window counts and what pushes a price up, is in how much window cleaning costs in Barrie. We are based in Horseshoe Valley, there is no rural surcharge anywhere in Simcoe County, and we carry $2 million in liability insurance.

A simple plan for most houses

1. Spring: outside, everything. This is the one that matters.
2. Fall, if you want it: outside again, after the leaves are down.
3. Every second visit: add the inside.
4. Any time: the kitchen window and the patio door, by hand, yourself.

That keeps the glass clear all year for most houses in Barrie, Orillia and Innisfil, and you only pay for the inside when the inside has earned it.

The cover photo is a basement window from the outside, before and after. The frame, the sill and the glass were all on the outside, and none of it would have come off with a cloth from inside the house.

If you want a price for your own place, try the instant quote, or you can book online. Tell us outside only and that is what we will quote.