Can you get windows cleaned in winter? What is worth booking from November to March

Early December, around three in the afternoon, the sun gets low enough to come straight through the south windows. In a two-storey in Ardagh or a bungalow in Allandale, that is the moment you see the inside of the glass properly: a film from the kitchen, nose prints at dog height, and the streaks from the paper towel someone used in October.

So people ask us whether it is worth getting windows cleaned in winter. It is, but mostly the inside. From November to March, pay for the inside of your windows and let the outside wait for spring. There are a few good exceptions, and they are further down.

Why the outside can wait

Two reasons.

The first is the road. Every snowfall means plows and salt, and the spray off Bayfield, Mapleview or the 400 lands on every window that faces the street. Outside glass cleaned in December is back under a grey film after a few storms. You would be paying for a few weeks of clear glass.

The second is the water. We clean outside glass with pure water from the ground, and water freezes on cold glass. Down to about minus 5 we can still do it with a cold-weather solution, but it is slower work, and plenty of January days in Simcoe County never get that warm. Below that, the outside waits.

Spring is the better spend. Once the salt and grit are done, usually late April or May, one exterior clean takes off the whole winter at once. That timing is in our spring window cleaning guide.

Why the inside is the winter job

The inside gets worse in winter, not better.

• The house is shut up. Cooking, the furnace running, a wood stove in an Oro-Medonte farmhouse or the fireplace at a Horseshoe Valley chalet. Some of all that ends up on the glass as a thin haze.
• Condensation. Warm, damp air inside and cold glass means water on the inside of the pane on the coldest mornings. It runs down, sits in the bottom of the frame and the track, and dries there. That is where the black spots on a sill usually start.
• The low sun. In July the sun is high and the glass looks fine. In December it comes in sideways and lights up every smear.
• You are looking through them. Five months indoors is more time at the window than the rest of the year put together.

None of that cares what the thermometer says outside, so we clean interiors all winter. An inside clean covers the glass, the frames, the sills, and the tracks vacuumed and wiped. The tracks matter most this time of year, because that is where the condensation ends up. The order we work in is in how to clean window tracks, screens and frames.

When the outside is worth doing anyway

• You are listing the house. Photos and showings in February want clean glass on both sides. Pick a mild day, and get the street side done as close to the photo day as you can, since that side picks up the salt first.
• A window that faces the water, not the road. The lake side of a house on Kempenfelt Bay, Lake Couchiching or the Alcona shore does not get the plow spray, so an outside clean there holds up much longer than one on the street side.
• A mild stretch in November. Late fall is still the tail end of the outside season. If you missed October and November hands you a run of days above zero, there is still time.

What it costs

Same prices all winter. On our window cleaning page, a bungalow inside and out is about $300, outside only is $150 to $200 (usually 60 to 70 percent of the full price), and a standard two-storey inside and out is about $400. Inside only is quoted from your window count. There is no rural surcharge anywhere in Simcoe County, so a farmhouse in Springwater is priced the same way as a semi in Painswick.

Splitting the two sides across the year is fine: the inside now, the outside in the spring. It is the same thinking as interior vs exterior window cleaning, turned around for the season.

The cover is from one of our jobs: a window over a dock, seen from inside the house, before and after.

If you want the inside done this winter, get a number from the instant quote or book online. In Barrie, the Barrie window cleaning page has the local details, including when we stop doing outsides.